Pterodroma cahow

The Bermuda petrel is a gadfly petrel. Commonly known in Bermuda as the cahow, a name derived from its eerie cries, this nocturnal ground-nesting seabird is the national bird of Bermuda and is pictured on Bermudian currency. Bermuda petrels are the second rarest seabird on the planet. They have medium-sized bodies and long wings, a greyish-black crown and collar, dark grey upper-wings and tail, white upper-tail coverts and white under-wings edged with black, and the underparts are completely white.

Pterodroma cahow

Richard Crossley · 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
Also called
Bermuda petrelPBDB
Sits inside
PterodromaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
Life habit
ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
Mass
355 gWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 774 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 3 of 7 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 4 of 7 occurrences807 ka–764 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences764 ka–722 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences722 ka–679 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences679 ka–637 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences637 ka–595 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences595 ka–552 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences552 ka–510 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences510 ka–467 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences467 ka–425 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences425 ka–382 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences382 ka–340 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences340 ka–297 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences297 ka–255 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences255 ka–212 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences212 ka–170 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences170 ka–127 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences127 ka–85 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences85 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences42 ka–0 Mya — about 5 occurrences1.27 Mya0 Mya

7 occurrences of Pterodroma cahow 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

7 occurrences

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.

Pterodroma cahow and its relatives

Holocene

Where Pterodroma cahow and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

63 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Pterodroma cahow, 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

7 references

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 content1

Picture of Pterodroma cahow

Credit
Richard Crossley
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itPterodroma through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Nichols and Mowbray 1916)