Phalacrocorax varius
The Australian pied cormorant, also known as the pied cormorant, pied shag, or great pied cormorant, is a medium-sized member of the cormorant family. It is found around the coasts of Australasia. In New Zealand, it is usually known either as the pied shag or by its Māori name of kāruhiruhi. Older sources may refer to it as the "yellow-faced cormorant".

Sid Mosdell from New Zealand · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- pied cormorantPBDB
- Sits inside
- PhalacrocoraxPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 45 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
5 occurrences of Phalacrocorax varius 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
5 occurrences- Pleistocene40%
- Holocene60%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Phalacrocorax varius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Phalacrocorax varius and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Phalacrocorax varius and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
111 taxa- Anas chlorotis4 sites
- Apteryx australis4 sites
- Ardenna grisea4 sites
- Corvus moriorum4 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae4 sites
- Cyanoramphus4 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus4 sites
- Eudyptula minor4 sites
- Gallirallus australis4 sites
- Haematopus unicolor4 sites
- Nestor meridionalis4 sites
- Phalacrocorax carunculatus4 sites
- Phalacrocorax punctatus4 sites
- Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae4 sites
- Anas superciliosa3 sites
- Anthus novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Aythya novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Biziura delautouri3 sites
- Callaeas cinereus3 sites
- Circus eylesi3 sites
- Cygnus sumnerensis3 sites
- Emeidae3 sites
- Emeus crassus3 sites
- Fulica prisca3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Phalacrocorax varius, 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- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand3
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand1
- A contribution to the knowledge of the extinct avifauna of Australia1
Each of the 5 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 Phalacrocorax varius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Sid Mosdell from New Zealand
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phalacrocorax varius was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itPhalacrocorax through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)