Ardenna tenuirostris
The short-tailed shearwater or slender-billed shearwater, also called yolla or moonbird, and commonly known as the muttonbird both in early Australia and in New Zealand, is the most abundant seabird species in Australian waters, and is one of the few Australian native birds in which the chicks are commercially harvested. It is a migratory species that breeds mainly on small islands in Bass Strait and Tasmania and migrates to the Northern Hemisphere for the boreal summer.

NPS · Public Domain · 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
- short-tailed shearwaterPBDB
- Sits inside
- ArdennaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
- Mass
- 82 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
15 occurrences of Ardenna tenuirostris 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
15 occurrences- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene60%
- Holocene27%
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.
Found in
1 formation
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group2
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The named rock units Ardenna tenuirostris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ardenna tenuirostris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Ardenna tenuirostris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
683 taxa- Ardenna grisea10 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus7 sites
- Uria aalge7 sites
- Fratercula dowi6 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus6 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus6 sites
- Larus5 sites
- Anser caerulescens4 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis4 sites
- Chendytes lawi4 sites
- Melanitta fusca4 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus4 sites
- Puffinus4 sites
- Aechmophorus3 sites
- Clangula hyemalis3 sites
- Fraterculini3 sites
- Fulmarus glacialis3 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus3 sites
- Histrionicus histrionicus3 sites
- Larus californicus3 sites
- Melanitta perspicillata3 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix3 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Ardenna tenuirostris, 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
7 references- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island6
- Pleistocene seabirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan: systematics and oceanographic context3
- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina2
- Late Holocene hunting economies in coastal southeastern Australia: Insights from the archaeological fauna of Curracurrang 1 Rockshelter, Royal National Park1
- Holocene fossil bird remains from subantarctic Macquarie Island1
- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand1
- Fossils indicate Pelecanoides georgicus had large colonies at Mason Bay, Stewart Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 15 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 Ardenna tenuirostris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NPS
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itArdenna through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Temminck 1823)