Ixobrychus exilis
The least bittern is a small heron, the smallest member of the family Ardeidae found in the Americas. This species was formerly placed in the genus Ixobrychus.
Charles Homler d/b/a FocusOnWildlife · 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
- least bitternPBDB
- Sits inside
- IxobrychusPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Ardeidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Ardeidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ardeidae
- Mass
- 10 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 1.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 4.7 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Ixobrychus exilis 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
4 occurrences- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene82%
- Holocene2%
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 Ixobrychus exilis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ixobrychus exilis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Ixobrychus exilis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
239 taxa- Anas crecca3 sites
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala3 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps3 sites
- Porzana carolina3 sites
- Rallus longirostris3 sites
- Zenaida macroura3 sites
- Accipiter cooperii2 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus2 sites
- Anabernicula gracilenta2 sites
- Ardea2 sites
- Botaurus lentiginosus2 sites
- Buteo2 sites
- Cathartes aura2 sites
- Colinus virginianus2 sites
- Dasypus bellus2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Falco sparverius2 sites
- Gopherus polyphemus2 sites
- Gymnogyps2 sites
- Holmesina floridanus2 sites
- Junco hyemalis2 sites
- Lynx2 sites
- Megalonyx leptostomus2 sites
- Megascops asio2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Ixobrychus exilis, 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- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula2
- Two new late Blancan avifaunas from Florida and the extinction of wetland birds in the Plio-Pleistocene1
- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas1
Each of the 4 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 content1
Picture of Ixobrychus exilis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles Homler d/b/a FocusOnWildlife
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ixobrychus exilis 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 itIxobrychus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)