Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae
The silver gull is a gull in Oceania. It is the most common gull of Australia. It has been found throughout the continent, but particularly at or near coastal areas. It is smaller than the Pacific gull, which also lives in Australia.

JJ Harrison · 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
- silver gullPBDB
- Sits inside
- ChroicocephalusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 313 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.
5 occurrences of Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae 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
5 occurrences- Pleistocene40%
- Holocene60%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
161 taxa- Corvus3 sites
- Eudyptes3 sites
- Eudyptula minor3 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Pachyptila turtur3 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix3 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Anthornis melanocephala2 sites
- Ardenna grisea2 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis2 sites
- Larus dominicanus2 sites
- Megalurus rufescens2 sites
- Pachyptila2 sites
- Pachyptila vittata2 sites
- Pterodroma axillaris2 sites
- Tribonyx mortierii2 sites
- Turnix varius2 sites
- Accipiter fasciatus1 site
- Alauda arvensis1 site
- Amphibolurus1 site
- Anas castanea1 site
- Anas chlorotis1 site
- Anas superciliosa1 site
- Anseranas semipalmata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae, 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- Bird extinctions and fossil bones from Mangere Island, Chatham Islands2
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand1
- Fossil avian assemblage of Pitfall Origin from Holocene sediments in Amphitheatre Cave (G-2), South-western Victoria, Australia1
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia1
Each of the 5 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 Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae 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, “Silver gull”
- 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 itChroicocephalus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Stephens 1826)