Himantopus himantopus
The black-winged stilt is a widely distributed, very long-legged wader in the avocet and stilt family Recurvirostridae. Its scientific name, Himantopus himantopus, is sometimes used to generalize a single, almost cosmopolitan species. Alternatively, it is restricted to the form that is widespread in Europe, Asia and Africa, which equals the nominate group of H. himantopus sensu lato. Meanwhile, the black-necked and white-backed stilts both inhabit the Americas; the pied stilt ranges from Australia and New Zealand. Today, most sources accept between one and four actual species.

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
- black-winged stiltPBDB
- Sits inside
- HimantopusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 160 gWikidata
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.
2 occurrences of Himantopus himantopus 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
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.
Himantopus himantopus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Himantopus himantopus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
70 taxa- Accipitridae2 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Rallidae2 sites
- Accipiter1 site
- Accipiter henstii1 site
- Alopochen sirabensis1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anser1 site
- Apus balstoni1 site
- Aquila1 site
- Aquila chrysaetos1 site
- Ardea1 site
- Ardea humbloti1 site
- Ardeidae1 site
- Ardeola1 site
- Athene superciliaris1 site
- Aythya1 site
- Bucephala clangula1 site
- Buteo brachypterus1 site
- Buteo rufinus1 site
- Calidris1 site
- Calidris pugnax1 site
- Caprimulgus madagascariensis1 site
- Charadriiformes1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Himantopus himantopus, 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- Subfossil birds from a submerged cave in southwestern Madagascar1
- Exploitation of a seasonal resource: bird hunting during the late Natufian at Shubayqa 11
Each of the 2 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 Himantopus himantopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
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 itHimantopus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)