Lithornis vulturinus

Richard Owen · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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- Sits inside
- LithornisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 59.24 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Lithornis vulturinus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
8 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
- London Clay Formation · Thames Group6
- Fur Formation1
- Upnor Formation1
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The named rock units Lithornis vulturinus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lithornis vulturinus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Lithornis vulturinus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
110 taxa- ? Congorhynchus elliotti1 site
- Acanthocybiinae1 site
- Acanthocybium1 site
- Acestrus ornatus1 site
- Acipenser1 site
- Acipenser toliapicus1 site
- Aglyptorhynchus sulcatus1 site
- Aglyptorhynchus venablesi1 site
- Albula oweni1 site
- Ampheristus toliapicus1 site
- Arctocyonides arenae1 site
- Argillichthys toombsi1 site
- Argillipes1 site
- Argillipes aurorum1 site
- Aulopopsis depressifrons1 site
- Aulopopsis egertoni1 site
- Beerichthys1 site
- Beerichthys ingens1 site
- Bramoides brieni1 site
- Brychaetus muelleri1 site
- Bucklandium diluvii1 site
- Chascacocolius oscitans1 site
- Clupeiformes1 site
- Cylindracanthus rectus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Lithornis vulturinus, 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- Birds of the British Lower Eocene6
- Bird evolution in the Eocene: climate change in Europe and a Danish fossil fauna1
- An early condor-like vulture from North America1
Each of the 8 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Lithornis vulturinus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Richard Owen
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lithornis vulturinus 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLithornis through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1840