Clangula hyemalis
The long-tailed duck is a medium-sized sea duck that breeds in the tundra and taiga regions of the arctic and winters along the northern coastlines of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is the only member of the genus Clangula.

Wolfgang Wander · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- long-tailed duckPBDB
- Sits inside
- ClangulaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anatinae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anatinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Anatinae
Time the record covers
At least 1.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
19 occurrences of Clangula hyemalis 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
19 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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 Clangula hyemalis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 18 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Clangula hyemalis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Clangula hyemalis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
463 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos7 sites
- Canis lupus6 sites
- Phalaropus lobatus5 sites
- Anas acuta4 sites
- Ardenna grisea4 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Fraterculini4 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus4 sites
- Pusa hispida4 sites
- Shiriyanetta hasegawai4 sites
- Uria lomvia4 sites
- Uria onoi4 sites
- Ursus arctos4 sites
- Aethia cristatella3 sites
- Anas3 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis3 sites
- Anatidae3 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos3 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris3 sites
- Bison3 sites
- Bubo virginianus3 sites
- Capricornis crispus3 sites
- Fulica americana3 sites
- Gallinago3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Clangula hyemalis, 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
16 references- Pleistocene seabirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan: systematics and oceanographic context4
- Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas1
- Brown bear (Ursus arctos) (9880 ± 35 BP) from late-glacial Champlain Sea deposits at Saint-Nicolas, Quebec, Canada, and the dispersal history of brown bears1
- Humans and marine resource interaction reappraised: Archaeofauna remains during the late Pleistocene and Holocene in Cantabrian Spain1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Birds in Finnish prehistory1
- Gruta da Figueira Brava: Pleistocene marine mammals1
- Coastal adaptation and marine exploitation of the island Hiiumaa, Estonia, during the stone age with special emphasis on the Kõpu I site1
- Sedimentology and stratigraphy in the cave Hamnsundhelleren, western Norway1
- Ice Age Vertebrates in the Canadian Arctic Islands1
- Quaternary geology and biology of the Jorgen Bronlund Fjord area, North Greenland1
- The late Pleistocene avifauna of Crystal Ball Cave, Utah1
Each of the 19 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. 4 further references are not listed. 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 Clangula hyemalis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Wolfgang Wander
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Clangula hyemalis 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 itClangula through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)