Aythya fuligula
The tufted duck is a small diving duck with a population of nearly one million birds, found in northern Eurasia. They are partially migratory. The scientific name is derived from Ancient Greek aithuia, an unidentified seabird mentioned by authors such as Hesychius and Aristotle, and Latin fuligo 'soot' and gula 'throat'. It is a game bird.

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
- tufted duckPBDB
- Sits inside
- AythyaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anatinae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anatinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Anatinae
- Mass
- 56 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 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
7 occurrences of Aythya fuligula 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- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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.
Aythya fuligula and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Aythya fuligula and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
178 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos7 sites
- Anas crecca6 sites
- Anatidae4 sites
- Aythya nyroca4 sites
- Spatula clypeata4 sites
- Turdus4 sites
- Anas3 sites
- Aythya ferina3 sites
- Hirundo rustica3 sites
- Lagopus3 sites
- Mareca strepera3 sites
- Microtus3 sites
- Passeriformes3 sites
- Spatula querquedula3 sites
- Turdus pilaris3 sites
- Accipiter nisus2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Arvicola2 sites
- Buteo buteo2 sites
- Chroicocephalus ridibundus2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Crex crex2 sites
- Crocidura2 sites
- Delichon urbicum2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Aythya fuligula, 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- The ornithological remains from Marathousa 1 (Middle Pleistocene; Megalopolis Basin, Greece)2
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia2
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- A new Middle Pleistocene bird assemblage from Cava di Breccia di Casal Selce (Ponte Galeria, Rome, Italy)1
- Huescar-1 (Granada, Espana): Avance de la lista de aves y consiguientes conjeturas sobre paleoambiente y paleogeografia1
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 Aythya fuligula
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alexis Lours
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aythya fuligula 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Tufted duck”
- 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 itAythya through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)