Papasula abbotti
Abbott's booby is an endangered seabird of the sulid family, which includes gannets and boobies. It is a large booby and is placed within its own monotypic genus. It was first identified from a specimen collected by William Louis Abbott, who discovered it on Assumption Island in 1892.

Christina Lipka · CC BY-SA 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
- Abbott's boobyPBDB
- Sits inside
- PapasulaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 112.17 gWikidata
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 Papasula abbotti on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
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.
Papasula abbotti and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Papasula abbotti and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Porphyrio paepae2 sites
- Vini sinotoi2 sites
- Vini vidivici2 sites
- Alectroenas nitidissimus1 site
- Alopecoenas rubescens1 site
- Alopochen mauritianus1 site
- Anas theodori1 site
- Aphanapteryx bonasia1 site
- Circus maillardi1 site
- Columbidae1 site
- Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus1 site
- Ducula galeata1 site
- Egretta garzetta dimorpha1 site
- Fulica newtonii1 site
- Gallirallus1 site
- Gallirallus roletti1 site
- Gallus gallus1 site
- Lophopsittacus mauritianus1 site
- Microcarbo africanus1 site
- Nesoenas mayeri1 site
- Numenius phaeopus1 site
- Nycticorax mauritianus1 site
- Otus sauzieri1 site
- Ptilinopus dupetithouarsii1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Papasula abbotti, 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 new subspecies and new records of Papasula abbotti (Aves: Sulidae) from the archaeological sites in the tropical Pacific2
- On subfossil bones of Abbott’s Booby Sula abbotti from the Mascarene Islands, with a note on the proportions and distribution of the Sulidae1
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. 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 content1
Picture of Papasula abbotti
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Christina Lipka
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Papasula abbotti 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 itPapasula through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Ridgway 1893)