Gyps fulvus
The Eurasian griffon vulture is a large Old World vulture in the bird of prey family Accipitridae. It is also known as the Eurasian griffon or griffon vulture, although the latter term is sometimes used for the genus Gyps as a whole.

Pierre Dalous · 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
- Eurasian griffonPBDB
- Sits inside
- GypsPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 252 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Gyps fulvus 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- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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.
Gyps fulvus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Gyps fulvus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
110 taxa- Columba oenas3 sites
- Corvus monedula3 sites
- Falco tinnunculus3 sites
- Turdus3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Accipiter gentilis2 sites
- Alectoris rufa2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Athene cretensis2 sites
- Candiacervus cretensis2 sites
- Columba2 sites
- Columba palumbus2 sites
- Corvus2 sites
- Garrulus glandarius2 sites
- Mauremys rivulata2 sites
- Mus minotaurus2 sites
- Prunella collaris2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax2 sites
- Scolopax rusticola2 sites
- Turdus iliacus2 sites
- Ursus arctos2 sites
- Aegolius funereus1 site
- Anas1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Gyps fulvus, 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
5 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece3
- Late Pleistocene birds from Binagada (Azerbaijan) in collection of the National Museum of Natural History (Kyiv, Ukraine)1
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- Exceptional soft tissue fossilization of a Pleistocene vulture (Gyps fulvus): new evidence for emplacement temperatures of pyroclastic flow deposits1
- Presence of the Northern Bald Ibis Geronticus eremita (L.) during the Holocene in the Ardèche valley, southern France1
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. 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 Gyps fulvus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Pierre Dalous
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itGyps through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Hablizl 1783)