Platycercus
Rosellas are in a genus that consists of six species and nineteen subspecies. These colourful parrots from Australia are in the genus Platycercus. Platycercus means "broad-tailed" or "flat-tailed", reflecting a feature common to the rosellas and other members of the broad-tailed parrot tribe. Their diet is mainly seeds and fruit.

JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- PsittaculidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
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.
7 occurrences of Platycercus 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
7 occurrences- Pleistocene71%
- Holocene29%
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.
Platycercus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Platycercus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
110 taxa- Aegotheles cristatus3 sites
- Corvus3 sites
- Coturnix3 sites
- Hirundinidae3 sites
- Tribonyx mortierii3 sites
- Cacatua tenuirostris2 sites
- Cinclosoma punctatum2 sites
- Dasyornis broadbenti2 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis2 sites
- Neophema2 sites
- Phaps chalcoptera2 sites
- Phaps elegans2 sites
- Procoptodon gilli2 sites
- Ptilonorhynchus violaceus2 sites
- Turnix varius2 sites
- Tyto novaehollandiae2 sites
- Accipiter fasciatus1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Acrobates pygmaeus1 site
- Alisterus scapularis1 site
- Anas superciliosa1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Antechinus flavipes1 site
- Anthochaera carunculata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Platycercus, 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- Pleistocene avian fossils from Pyramids Cave (M-89), eastern Victoria, Australia3
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Fossil avian assemblage of Pitfall Origin from Holocene sediments in Amphitheatre Cave (G-2), South-western Victoria, Australia1
- Holocene avian assemblage from Skull Cave (AU-8), south-western Western Australia1
- Avian fossils from Quaternary deposits in 'Green Waterhole Cave', south-eastern South Australia1
Each of the 7 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 Platycercus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rosella”
- 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 itPsittaculidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vigors 1825