Centrornis majori
The Malagasy sheldgoose is an extinct monotypic species of large goose in the shelduck subfamily. It was described from subfossil remains radiocarbon dated to about 17,000 years ago, found in central Madagascar.

J. Green · 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
- Malagasy sheldgoosePBDB
- Sits inside
- CentrornisPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Centrornis majori on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene96%
- Holocene5%
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.
Centrornis majori and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Centrornis majori and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
17 taxa- Alopochen sirabensis2 sites
- Accipiter1 site
- Aepyornis1 site
- Anas bernieri1 site
- Anas melleri1 site
- Aquila1 site
- Ardea intermedia1 site
- Buteo brachypterus1 site
- Coua berthae1 site
- Gallinula chloropus1 site
- Hovacrex roberti1 site
- Microcarbo africanus1 site
- Mullerornis1 site
- Platalea alba1 site
- Plesiorycteropus germainepetterae1 site
- Sarkidiornis melanotos1 site
- Stephanoaetus mahery1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Centrornis majori, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- Holocene bird subfossils from the sites of Ampasambazimba, Antsirabe and Ampoza, Madagascar: changes in the avifauna of south central Madagascar over the past few millennia1
- On some fossil remains of carinate birds from central Madagascar1
Each of the 2 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 Centrornis majori
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- J. Green
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Centrornis majori 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 itCentrornis through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Andrews 1897