Apus pallidus

The pallid swift is a swift. Swifts have very short legs which they use only for clinging to vertical surfaces. The genus name Apus is Latin for a swift, thought by the ancients to be a type of swallow with no feet, and pallidus is Latin for "pale". Like other swifts they never settle voluntarily on the ground, but spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks. They drink on the wing.

Apus pallidus

Irvin calicut · CC BY-SA 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
pallid swiftPBDB
Sits inside
ApusPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Apodidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Mass
41.3 gWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 118 thousand years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 1 occurrencePleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

1 occurrence of Apus pallidus 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

1 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 pallidus and its relatives

Pleistocene

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

Found in the same rock

79 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Apus pallidus, 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 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Apus pallidus

Credit
Irvin calicut
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Apus pallidus 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. (Shelley 1870)