Falco eleonorae
Eleonora's falcon is a medium-sized falcon. It belongs to the hobby group, a rather close-knit number of similar falcons often considered a subgenus Falco. The sooty falcon is sometimes considered its closest relative, but while they certainly belong to the same lineage, they do not seem to be close sister species. The English name and the species name eleonorae commemorate Eleanor of Arborea, Queen or Lady-Judge and national heroine of Sardinia, who in 1392, under the jurisdiction conferred by the Carta de Logu, became the first ruler in history to grant protection to hawk and falcon nests against illegal hunters. The genus name Falco is from Late Latin falx, falcis, a sickle, referring to the claws of the bird.

Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 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
- Eleonora's falconPBDB
- Sits inside
- FalcoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Falconidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Falconidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Falconidae
- Mass
- 388 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Falco eleonorae 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
7 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.
Falco eleonorae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Falco eleonorae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
108 taxa- Pyrrhocorax graculus7 sites
- Scolopax rusticola7 sites
- Turdus7 sites
- Athene cretensis6 sites
- Columba6 sites
- Columba palumbus6 sites
- Corvus monedula6 sites
- Erithacus rubecula6 sites
- Falco tinnunculus6 sites
- Fringilla6 sites
- Accipiter gentilis5 sites
- Columba oenas5 sites
- Corvus5 sites
- Emberiza5 sites
- Garrulus glandarius5 sites
- Otus scops5 sites
- Sturnus5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
- Aegolius funereus4 sites
- Apus melba4 sites
- Buteo buteo4 sites
- Chloris chloris4 sites
- Columba livia4 sites
- Meridiocichla salotti4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Falco eleonorae, 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
2 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece6
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
Each of the 7 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Falco eleonorae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Falco eleonorae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itFalco through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gené 1839