Apus melba
via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- alpine swiftPBDB
- Sits inside
- ApusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Apodidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Apus melba 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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 melba and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Apus melba and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
102 taxa- Columba palumbus4 sites
- Falco eleonorae4 sites
- Fringilla4 sites
- Otus scops4 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus4 sites
- Scolopax rusticola4 sites
- Turdus4 sites
- Accipiter gentilis3 sites
- Aegolius funereus3 sites
- Athene cretensis3 sites
- Buteo buteo3 sites
- Chloris chloris3 sites
- Columba3 sites
- Columba oenas3 sites
- Corvus3 sites
- Corvus monedula3 sites
- Emberiza3 sites
- Erithacus rubecula3 sites
- Falco subbuteo3 sites
- Falco tinnunculus3 sites
- Garrulus glandarius3 sites
- Meridiocichla salotti3 sites
- Oenanthe hispanica3 sites
- Sturnus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Apus melba, 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
2 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece3
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
Each of the 4 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 Apus melba
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Apus melba 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.
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)