Circus spilonotus
The eastern marsh harrier is a bird of prey belonging to the marsh harrier group of harriers. It was previously considered to be conspecific with the western marsh harrier but is now usually classified as a separate species. It has two subspecies: C. s. spilonotus in eastern Asia and C. s. spilothorax in New Guinea.

(c) Анна Васильченко, some rights reserved (CC BY) · CC BY 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
- Eastern marsh-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 118 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Circus spilonotus 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
1 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.
Circus spilonotus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Circus spilonotus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
20 taxa- Ardeidae1 site
- Buteo buteo1 site
- Columbidae1 site
- Corvus macrorhynchos1 site
- Cuora1 site
- Gallirallus okinawae1 site
- Garrulus lidthi1 site
- Geoemyda japonica1 site
- Geoemydidae1 site
- Hypsipetes amaurotis1 site
- Manouria oyamai1 site
- Nycticorax caledonicus1 site
- Otus lempiji1 site
- Phalacrocorax capillatus1 site
- Scolopax mira1 site
- Scolopax rusticola1 site
- Treron formosae1 site
- Turdus pallidus1 site
- Zapornia fusca1 site
- Zoothera dauma major1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Circus spilonotus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Circus spilonotus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- (c) Анна Васильченко, some rights reserved (CC BY)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Circus spilonotus 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 itCircus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kaup 1847