Antrostomus noctitherus
The Puerto Rican nightjar, Puerto Rican whip-poor-will or guabairo is a bird in the nightjar family found in the coastal dry scrub forests in localized areas of southwestern Puerto Rico. It was described in 1916 from bones found in a cave in north central Puerto Rico and a single skin specimen from 1888, and was considered extinct until observed in the wild in 1961. The current population is estimated as 1,400-2,000 mature birds. The species is currently classified as Endangered due to pressures from habitat loss.

Mike Morel of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Puerto Rican nightjarPBDB
- Sits inside
- AntrostomusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Caprimulgidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Caprimulgidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Caprimulgidae
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Antrostomus noctitherus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene91%
- Holocene9%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Antrostomus noctitherus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Antrostomus noctitherus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
45 taxa- Agelaius xanthomus2 sites
- Capella anthonyi2 sites
- Coccyzus vieilloti2 sites
- Columbina passerina2 sites
- Geotrygon larva2 sites
- Geotrygon montana2 sites
- Icterus portoricensis2 sites
- Margarops fuscatus2 sites
- Megascops nudipes2 sites
- Melanerpes portoricensis2 sites
- Mimus polyglottos2 sites
- Nesospingus speculiferus2 sites
- Patagioenas inornata2 sites
- Patagioenas leucocephala2 sites
- Patagioenas squamosa2 sites
- Spindalis portoricensis2 sites
- Turdus plumbeus ardosiaceus2 sites
- Tyrannus caudifasciatus taylori2 sites
- Tyrannus dominicensis2 sites
- Zenaida aurita zenaida2 sites
- Accipiter striatus1 site
- Ammodramus savannarum1 site
- Aves1 site
- Brachyphylla cavernarum1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Antrostomus noctitherus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Antrostomus noctitherus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mike Morel of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Antrostomus noctitherus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAntrostomus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Wetmore 1919)