Puffinus gavia
The fluttering shearwater is a species of seabird in the family Procellariidae. It is endemic to New Zealand and migrates to Australia and the Solomon Islands. Its natural habitats are open seas and rocky shores. It has been known as Forster's shearwater in the past.

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- Also called
- fluttering shearwaterPBDB
- Sits inside
- PuffinusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
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.
11 occurrences of Puffinus gavia 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene18%
- Holocene82%
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 Puffinus gavia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Puffinus gavia and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Puffinus gavia and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
100 taxa- Coturnix novaezelandiae8 sites
- Cyanoramphus8 sites
- Gallirallus australis7 sites
- Sphenodon7 sites
- Chenonetta finschi5 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae5 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix5 sites
- Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae5 sites
- Rattus exulans5 sites
- Coenocorypha aucklandica4 sites
- Hoplodactylus maculatus4 sites
- Mystacina robusta4 sites
- Petroica australis4 sites
- Tadorna variegata4 sites
- Turnagra capensis4 sites
- Anthornis melanura3 sites
- Aptornis defossor3 sites
- Callaeas cinereus3 sites
- Carduelis carduelis3 sites
- Gallinula hodgenorum3 sites
- Gerygone igata3 sites
- Mohoua ochrocephala3 sites
- Mus musculus3 sites
- Passer domesticus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Puffinus gavia, 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
2 references- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand9
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand2
Each of the 11 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Puffinus gavia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Puffinus gavia was found in Sketchfab.
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 itPuffinus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Forster 1844)