Larus delawarensis
The ring-billed gull is a medium-sized gull native to North America, breeding in Canada and the northern Contiguous United States, and wintering mainly in the United States and northern Mexico. The genus name is from Latin Larus which appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird. The specific delawarensis refers to the Delaware River.

User:Mdf · 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
- ring-billed 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
- 471 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Larus delawarensis 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- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene49%
- Holocene27%
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
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
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The named rock units Larus delawarensis 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.
Larus delawarensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Larus delawarensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
559 taxa- Branta canadensis3 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis3 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus3 sites
- Melanitta perspicillata3 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus3 sites
- Accipitridae2 sites
- Alosa sapidissima2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Anser caerulescens2 sites
- Ardea herodias2 sites
- Ardenna grisea2 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris2 sites
- Branta bernicla2 sites
- Cerorhinca2 sites
- Chendytes lawi2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius2 sites
- Fulmarus glacialis2 sites
- Gavia immer2 sites
- Larus californicus2 sites
- Melanitta fusca2 sites
- Mergus serrator2 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus2 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Larus delawarensis, 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
4 references- After Hopewell in Southern Québec1
- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island1
- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina1
- A catalogue of late Quaternary vertebrates from California: Part One, nonmarine lower vertebrate and avian taxa1
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 content2
Picture of Larus delawarensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Mdf
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Larus delawarensis · FMNH:Birds:495258
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 itLarus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ord 1815