Psilopterinae

Uncredited · 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
- PhorusrhacidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
Time the record covers
At least 47 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 400 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 11.7 ka.
37 occurrences of Psilopterinae 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
37 occurrences- Eocene14%
- Miocene84%
- Pleistocene3%
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
10 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation24
- Puerto Madryn Formation2
- Sarmiento Formation2
- Arroyo Chasicó Formation1
- Monte Leon Formation1
- Chichinales Formation1
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The named rock units Psilopterinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Psilopterinae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Psilopterinae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
390 taxa- Psilopterus lemoinei11 sites
- Cladosictis patagonica10 sites
- Sipalocyon gracilis9 sites
- Borhyaena tuberata8 sites
- Hegetotherium mirabile7 sites
- Neoreomys australis7 sites
- Palaeothentes lemoinei7 sites
- Acdestis oweni6 sites
- Adinotherium6 sites
- Interatherium6 sites
- Nesodon6 sites
- Patagornis marshi6 sites
- Phorusrhacos longissimus6 sites
- Protypotherium praerutilum6 sites
- Psilopterus bachmanni6 sites
- Thoatherium minusculum6 sites
- Acarechimys minutus5 sites
- Homunculus patagonicus5 sites
- Microbiotherium tehuelchum5 sites
- Nesodon imbricatus5 sites
- Palaeothentes intermedius5 sites
- Palaeothentes minutus5 sites
- Propalaehoplophoridae5 sites
- Protypotherium5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 27 sites for Psilopterinae, 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
20 references- Systematic revision of the Phorusrhacidae (Avies: Ralliformes)7
- Catálogo de los pájaros fósiles de la República Argentina conservados en el Museo de La Plata [Catalogue of the fossil birds from the Argentine Republic housed in the Museo de La Plata]5
- Diversity and paleobiology of the Santacrucian birds4
- New records of birds from the Santa Cruz Formation (Early-Middle Miocene) at the Río Santa Cruz Valley, Patagonia, Argentina3
- New records of birds from the Santa Cruz Formation (Early-Middle Miocene) at the Río Santa Cruz Valley, Patagonia2
- Late Miocene continental biota in Northeastern Patagonia (Peninsula Valdes Chubut Argentina)2
- Insights on the oldest terror bird (Aves, Phorusrhacidae) from the Eocene of Argentina1
- Fossil vertebrates of the early-middle Miocene Cerro Boleadoras Formation, northwestern Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina1
- Sedimentology and fossil vertebrates of the Santa Cruz formation (early Miocene) in Lago Posadas, southwestern Patagonia, Argentina1
- The last terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae): new evidence from the late Pleistocene of Uruguay1
- Tertiary ground birds from Patagonia (Argentina) in the Tournouër collection of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris1
- ‘‘Terror Birds’’ (Phorusrhacidae) from the Eocene of Europe Imply Trans-Tethys Dispersal1
Each of the 37 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. 8 further references are not listed. 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 Psilopterinae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Psilopterinae 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPhorusrhacidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Dolgopol de Saez 1927)