Cepphus
Cepphus is a genus of seabirds in the auk family also referred to as guillemots by association with the related genus Uria, or tysties, from the Old Norse name for C. grylle.

No machine-readable author provided. Kelson assumed (based on copyright claims). · 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- Sits inside
- AlcidaePBDB
- 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 least 7.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 0 Mya.
32 occurrences of Cepphus on record. 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
32 occurrences- Miocene9%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene37%
- Holocene50%
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
3 formations
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The named rock units Cepphus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 27 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
414 taxa- Fulmarus glacialis10 sites
- Larus10 sites
- Rangifer tarandus10 sites
- Phoca hispida9 sites
- Somateria mollissima9 sites
- Uria aalge9 sites
- Ursus maritimus9 sites
- Erignathus barbatus8 sites
- Odobenus rosmarus8 sites
- Ovibos moschatus8 sites
- Aves7 sites
- Corvus corax7 sites
- Melanitta fusca7 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus7 sites
- Vulpes lagopus7 sites
- Anser caerulescens6 sites
- Ardenna grisea6 sites
- Balaena mysticetus6 sites
- Lepus arcticus6 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus6 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus6 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus6 sites
- Uria lomvia6 sites
- Branta5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Cepphus, 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
19 references- Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas6
- Pleistocene seabirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan: systematics and oceanographic context4
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits2
- Birds in Finnish prehistory2
- Bird bones from Jettböle I, a site in the Neolithic Åland archipelago in the northern Baltic2
- Seabirds and Late Pleistocene marine environments in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean2
- Fossil birds from Tertiary marine beds at Oceanside, San Diego County, California, with discriptions of two species of the genera Uria and Cepphus (Aves: Alcidae)2
- Animals and the precontact Inuit of Labrador: an examination using faunal remains, space and myth1
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna1
- A zooarchaeological study at Buldir Island, Western Aleutians, Alaska1
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from San Miguel Island, California1
Each of the 32 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. 7 further references are not listed. 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 content3
Picture of Cepphus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- No machine-readable author provided. Kelson assumed (based on copyright claims).
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cepphus grylle · l-jz:JZ:28
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- The Watt Institution
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cepphus”
- 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 itAlcidae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Moehring 1758