Apus apus

The common swift is a medium-sized bird, superficially similar to the barn swallow or house martin but somewhat larger, though not stemming from those passerine species, being in the order Apodiformes. The resemblances between the groups are due to convergent evolution, reflecting similar contextual development. The swifts' nearest relatives are the New World hummingbirds and the Southeast Asian treeswifts.

Apus apus

Alexis Lours · CC BY 4.0 · 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
common swiftPBDB
Sits inside
ApusPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Apodidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Mass
3.5 gWikidata

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 774 ka to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 5 of 7 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 2 of 7 occurrences807 ka–764 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences764 ka–722 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences722 ka–679 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences679 ka–637 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences637 ka–595 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences595 ka–552 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences552 ka–510 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences510 ka–467 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences467 ka–425 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425 ka–382 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences382 ka–340 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences340 ka–297 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences297 ka–255 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences255 ka–212 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences212 ka–170 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences170 ka–127 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences127 ka–85 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence85 ka–42 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence42 ka–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences129 ka – 11.7 ka1.27 Mya0 Mya

7 occurrences of Apus 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

7 occurrences

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 apus and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Apus apus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

215 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Apus 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

5 references

Each of the 7 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 content1

Picture of Apus apus

Credit
Alexis Lours
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Apus apus 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 itApus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)