Larus canus
The common gull is a gull that breeds in cool temperate regions of the Palearctic from Iceland and Scotland east to Kamchatka in the Russian Far East. Most common gulls migrate further south in winter, reaching the Mediterranean Sea, the southern Caspian Sea, and the seas around China and Japan; northwest European populations are at least partly resident. The closely related short-billed gull was formerly often included in this species, which was then sometimes known collectively as "mew gull".

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- mew gullPBDB
- Sits inside
- LarusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 360 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
7 occurrences of Larus canus on record. 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- Pleistocene42%
- Holocene58%
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 the same rock
137 taxa- Calidris pugnax3 sites
- Falco subbuteo3 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Athene noctua2 sites
- Aythya2 sites
- Calidris2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Corvus corone2 sites
- Falco peregrinus2 sites
- Mergus serrator2 sites
- Turdus merula2 sites
- Accipitridae1 site
- Alauda arvensis1 site
- Alca torda1 site
- Alectoris1 site
- Anas platyrhynchos1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anser1 site
- Anser albifrons1 site
- Anser caerulescens1 site
- Antlzus cf. pratensis1 site
- Arenaria interpres1 site
- Artiodactyla1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Larus canus, 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
6 references- Humans and marine resource interaction reappraised: Archaeofauna remains during the late Pleistocene and Holocene in Cantabrian Spain2
- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)1
- Subsistence Practices of Pioneering Thule– Inuit: A Faunal Analysis of Tiktalik1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Bird bones from Jettböle I, a site in the Neolithic Åland archipelago in the northern Baltic1
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover1
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 Larus canus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Common gull”
- 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 itLarus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758