Phoenicopterus roseus
The greater flamingo is the largest and most widespread species of the flamingo family. Common in the Old World, they are found in Northern (coastal) and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Levant, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe.

Giles Laurent · 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
- greater flamingoPBDB
- Sits inside
- PhoenicopterusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Length
- 132.5 cmWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
9 occurrences of Phoenicopterus roseus 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
9 occurrences- Pleistocene44%
- Holocene56%
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 Phoenicopterus roseus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Phoenicopterus roseus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Phoenicopterus roseus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
180 taxa- Anas4 sites
- Anas crecca3 sites
- Ardea cinerea3 sites
- Fulica newtonii3 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus2 sites
- Alopochen sirabensis2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Aphanapteryx bonasia2 sites
- Ardea humbloti2 sites
- Barbus bynni2 sites
- Fulica cristata2 sites
- Gazella dorcas2 sites
- Gazella leptoceros2 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius2 sites
- Larus2 sites
- Lophopsittacus mauritianus2 sites
- Mareca penelope2 sites
- Mergellus albellus2 sites
- Mergus serrator2 sites
- Milvus migrans2 sites
- Mullerornis2 sites
- Phalacrocorax carbo2 sites
- Plectropterus gambensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Phoenicopterus roseus, 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
5 references- A multi-locus inference of the evolutionary diversification of extant flamingos (Phoenicopteridae)5
- Subfossil birds from a submerged cave in southwestern Madagascar1
- Descriptions and palaeoecological implications of bird remains from the Middle Pleistocene of Florisbad, South Africa1
- Relationships of the Late Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Kom Ombo, Upper Egypt1
- Kom Ombo: Preliminary Report on the Fauna of Late Paleolithic Sites in Upper Egypt1
Each of the 9 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 Phoenicopterus roseus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Giles Laurent
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itPhoenicopterus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pallas 1811)