Dinornis giganteus
Smithsonian Institution · CC0 · via Smithsonian. 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- Sits inside
- DinornisPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Dinornis
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Dinornis
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Dinornis
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.
6 occurrences of Dinornis giganteus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene17%
- Holocene83%
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
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The named rock units Dinornis giganteus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dinornis giganteus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Dinornis giganteus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
125 taxa- Emeus crassus6 sites
- Apteryx australis5 sites
- Chenonetta finschi5 sites
- Cnemiornis calcitrans5 sites
- Gallirallus australis5 sites
- Harpagornis moorei5 sites
- Pachyornis elephantopus5 sites
- Anas chlorotis4 sites
- Callaeas cinereus4 sites
- Corvus moriorum4 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae4 sites
- Euryapteryx geranoides4 sites
- Fulica prisca4 sites
- Nestor meridionalis4 sites
- Aptornis defossor3 sites
- Circus eylesi3 sites
- Dinornis struthoides3 sites
- Falco novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Gallinula hodgenorum3 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos3 sites
- Porphyrio hochstetteri3 sites
- Sceloglaux albifacies3 sites
- Strigops habroptila3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Dinornis giganteus, 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
3 references- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand4
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand1
- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 6 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 Dinornis giganteus
- Source
- Smithsonian
- Credit
- Smithsonian Institution
- Licence
- CC0 — this site’s default, not the record’s
- 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
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDinornis through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1844