Oceanodroma melania
The black storm petrel is a small seabird of the storm petrel family Hydrobatidae. It is 23 cm in length, with a wingspan of 46–51 cm.

David F. Belmonte · 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
- black storm-petrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- OceanodromaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
- Mass
- 13.8 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Oceanodroma melania 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Oceanodroma melania and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Oceanodroma melania and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
101 taxa- Agelaius tricolor2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Branta hutchinsii2 sites
- Catharus guttatus2 sites
- Catharus ustulatus2 sites
- Cerorhinca monocerata2 sites
- Chondestes grammacus2 sites
- Eremophila alpestris2 sites
- Falco sparverius2 sites
- Haemorhous mexicanus2 sites
- Hydrobates leucorhous2 sites
- Icterus bullockii2 sites
- Junco hyemalis2 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus2 sites
- Larus heermanni2 sites
- Larus occidentalis2 sites
- Melospiza melodia2 sites
- Oceanodroma homochroa2 sites
- Oreoscoptes montanus2 sites
- Oreothlypis celata2 sites
- Passerculus sandwichensis2 sites
- Passerella iliaca2 sites
- Pheucticus melanocephalus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Oceanodroma melania, 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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 Oceanodroma melania
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- David F. Belmonte
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Oceanodroma melania 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 itOceanodroma through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Bonaparte 1854)