Calidris alpina

The dunlin is a small wader in the genus Calidris. The English name is a dialect form of "dunling", first recorded in 1531–1532. It derives from dun, "dull brown", with the suffix -ling, meaning a person or thing with the given quality.

Calidris alpina

Charles Homler d/b/a FocusOnWildlife · 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
dunlinPBDB
Sits inside
CalidrisPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
Life habit
ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes

Time the record covers

At most 199 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 4 of 4 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 4 occurrences213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences710 ka0 Mya

4 occurrences of Calidris alpina 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

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.

Calidris alpina and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Calidris alpina and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

132 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Calidris alpina, 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

4 references

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. 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 Calidris alpina

Credit
Charles Homler d/b/a FocusOnWildlife
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Calidris alpina 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 itCalidris through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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