Chroicocephalus philadelphia
Bonaparte's gull is a gull found mainly in northern North America. At 28 to 38 cm in length, it is one of the smallest species of gull. Its plumage is mainly white with grey upperparts. During breeding season, Bonaparte's gull gains a slaty-black hood. The sexes are similar in appearance.

Wildreturn · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- Bonaparte's gullPBDB
- Sits inside
- ChroicocephalusPBDB
- 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 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Chroicocephalus philadelphia 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
5 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Chroicocephalus philadelphia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Chroicocephalus philadelphia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
208 taxa- Anser caerulescens4 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Larus californicus4 sites
- Anser albifrons3 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis3 sites
- Chendytes lawi3 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus3 sites
- Phalaropus fulicarius3 sites
- Phalaropus lobatus3 sites
- Podiceps nigricollis3 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus3 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Aechmophorus2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis2 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Aquila pliogryps2 sites
- Aquila sodalis2 sites
- Ardenna grisea2 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris2 sites
- Arenaria melanocephala2 sites
- Asio priscus2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Chroicocephalus philadelphia, 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- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island2
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- A review of the Pleistocene birds of Fossil Lake, Oregon1
- Fossil birds from the Equus Beds of Oregon1
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 philadelphia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Wildreturn
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chroicocephalus philadelphia 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 itChroicocephalus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Ord 1815)