Malacorhynchus scarletti
Scarlett's duck is an extinct duck species from New Zealand which was closely related to the Australian pink-eared duck. The scientific name commemorates the late New Zealand ornithologist and palaeontologist Ron Scarlett who discovered the holotype in 1941. However, previously undescribed bones of the species found in 1903 were rediscovered in the Otago Museum in 1998. At least 32 fossil remains from deposits in Pyramid Valley, at Ngāpara in the South Island, and at Lake Poukawa in the North Island are in museum collections.
Museum of New Zealand, Russell Price Collection. Gift of the Hastings Cultural Center, 1982. · CC BY 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
- Scarlett's duckPBDB
- Sits inside
- MalacorhynchusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Malacorhynchus scarletti on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
3 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Malacorhynchus scarletti and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Malacorhynchus scarletti and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
99 taxa- Anas chlorotis3 sites
- Anas superciliosa3 sites
- Aythya novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Biziura delautouri3 sites
- Mergus australis3 sites
- Tadorna variegata3 sites
- Anas gracilis2 sites
- Anthus novaeseelandiae2 sites
- Apteryx2 sites
- Apteryx australis2 sites
- Ardenna grisea2 sites
- Chenonetta finschi2 sites
- Circus eylesi2 sites
- Corvus moriorum2 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae2 sites
- Cyanoramphus2 sites
- Cygnus sumnerensis2 sites
- Emeidae2 sites
- Emeus crassus2 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus2 sites
- Eudyptula minor2 sites
- Euryapteryx geranoides2 sites
- Fulica prisca2 sites
- Gallirallus australis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Malacorhynchus scarletti, 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- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand2
- The Holocene fossil waterfowl fauna of Lake Poukawa, North Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 3 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Malacorhynchus scarletti
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Museum of New Zealand, Russell Price Collection. Gift of the Hastings Cultural Center, 1982.
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Malacorhynchus scarletti 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 itMalacorhynchus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Olson 1977