Circus hudsonius

The northern harrier, also known as the marsh hawk or ring-tailed hawk, is a bird of prey. It breeds throughout the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere in Canada and the northernmost United States.

Circus hudsonius

Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California · 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
Northern harrierPBDB
Sits inside
CircusPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae

Time the record covers

At most 199 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 5 of 5 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 5 occurrences213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences710 ka0 Mya

5 occurrences of Circus hudsonius 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

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.

Circus hudsonius and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Circus hudsonius and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

242 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Circus hudsonius, 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

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 content2

Picture of Circus hudsonius

Credit
Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itCircus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1766)