Charadrius obscurus
The New Zealand dotterel is a species of shorebird found only in certain areas of New Zealand. It is also called the New Zealand plover or red-breasted plover, and its Māori names include tūturiwhatu, pukunui, and kūkuruatu.

Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz · 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
- red-breasted dotterelPBDB
- Sits inside
- CharadriusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 160 gWikidata
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.
3 occurrences of Charadrius obscurus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene67%
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
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The named rock units Charadrius obscurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Charadrius obscurus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Charadrius obscurus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
118 taxa- Anas chlorotis3 sites
- Apteryx australis3 sites
- Ardenna grisea3 sites
- Callaeas cinereus3 sites
- Corvus moriorum3 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae3 sites
- Cyanoramphus3 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus3 sites
- Eudyptula minor3 sites
- Falco novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Fulica prisca3 sites
- Gallinula hodgenorum3 sites
- Gallirallus australis3 sites
- Haematopus unicolor3 sites
- Harpagornis moorei3 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Larus dominicanus3 sites
- Mergus australis3 sites
- Nestor meridionalis3 sites
- Pachyornis elephantopus3 sites
- Pachyptila turtur3 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix3 sites
- Phalacrocorax carunculatus3 sites
- Phalacrocorax punctatus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Charadrius obscurus, 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
2 references- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand2
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 3 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 Charadrius obscurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Charadrius obscurus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itCharadrius through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gmelin 1789