Apus
The bird genus Apus comprise some of the Old World members of the family Apodidae, commonly known as swifts.

Tomasz Kuran aka Meteor2017 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- ApodinaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Apodidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
21 occurrences of Apus 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
21 occurrences- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene69%
- Holocene29%
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.
Apus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Apus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
470 taxa- Pyrrhocorax graculus9 sites
- Tyto alba9 sites
- Corvus monedula8 sites
- Emberiza8 sites
- Erithacus rubecula8 sites
- Turdus8 sites
- Chloris chloris7 sites
- Sturnus7 sites
- Falco eleonorae6 sites
- Falco tinnunculus6 sites
- Otus scops6 sites
- Rana6 sites
- Scolopax rusticola6 sites
- Accipiter gentilis5 sites
- Aegolius funereus5 sites
- Athene cretensis5 sites
- Coccothraustes coccothraustes5 sites
- Columba5 sites
- Columba oenas5 sites
- Columba palumbus5 sites
- Coturnix coturnix5 sites
- Fringilla5 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax5 sites
- Accipiter nisus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Apus, 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
12 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece6
- Holocene vertebrate assemblages provide the first evidence for the presence of the barn owl (Tytonidae, Tyto alba) on Socotra Island (Yemen)2
- New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site2
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report2
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary2
- Subfossil birds from a submerged cave in southwestern Madagascar1
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- Pleistocene non-passeriform landbirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan1
- New findings at Andrahomana Cave, southeastern Madagascar1
- The birds of the late Quaternary of the Altai Mts1
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)1
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover1
Each of the 21 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Apus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Tomasz Kuran aka Meteor2017
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Apus apus · nms:z:1931.43_apus
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Apus (bird)”
- 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 itApodinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Scopoli 1777