Pelagornis chilensis

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- PelagornisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pelagornithidae
Time the record covers
At least 4.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
3 occurrences of Pelagornis chilensis on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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- Miocene100%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Pelagornis chilensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Pelagornis chilensis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Pelagornis chilensis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Acrophoca longirostris1 site
- Balaenidae1 site
- Balaenoptera acutorostrata1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Brachydelphis1 site
- Carcharodon carcharias1 site
- Carcharodon hastalis1 site
- Cetotheriidae1 site
- Delphinidae1 site
- Diomedea1 site
- Eschrichtiidae1 site
- Hadrokirus martini1 site
- Herpetocetus1 site
- Livyatan1 site
- Pelagornithidae1 site
- Phalacrocorax1 site
- Phocidae1 site
- Phocoenidae1 site
- Physeteroidea1 site
- Piscophoca1 site
- Pontoporiidae1 site
- Puffinini1 site
- Spheniscus1 site
- Sula1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Pelagornis chilensis, 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- The earliest record (early Miocene) of a bony-toothed bird from South America and a reexamination of Venezuelan pelagornithids1
- New discoveries from the Bahia Inglesa Formation bonebed, a Late Miocene marine vertebrate assemblage from the Atacama Desert of Chile1
- Osteology of a new giant bony-toothed bird from the Miocene of Chile, with a revision of the taxonomy of Neogene Pelagornithidae1
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 content2

Picture of Pelagornis chilensis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itPelagornis through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Mayr and Rubilar-Rogers 2010