Spatula cyanoptera
The cinnamon teal is a species of duck found in western North and South America. It is a small dabbling duck, with bright reddish plumage on the male and duller brown plumage on the female. It lives in marshes and ponds, and feeds mostly on plants.

Clément Bardot · 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
- cinnamon tealPBDB
- Sits inside
- SpatulaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.4 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 4.7 Mya to 11.7 ka.
5 occurrences of Spatula cyanoptera 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene87%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Spatula cyanoptera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Spatula cyanoptera and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Spatula cyanoptera and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
241 taxa- Mareca americana5 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps4 sites
- Spatula clypeata4 sites
- Anas acuta3 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis3 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos3 sites
- Anser caerulescens3 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos3 sites
- Aythya collaris3 sites
- Rallus limicola3 sites
- Anserinae2 sites
- Antigone canadensis2 sites
- Aquila pliogryps2 sites
- Aquila sodalis2 sites
- Ardea herodias2 sites
- Aythya affinis2 sites
- Aythya americana2 sites
- Botaurus lentiginosus2 sites
- Branta propinqua2 sites
- Bubo virginianus2 sites
- Bucephala albeola2 sites
- Chroicocephalus philadelphia2 sites
- Ciconia maltha2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Spatula cyanoptera, 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- Two new late Blancan avifaunas from Florida and the extinction of wetland birds in the Plio-Pleistocene1
- Avian fossils from three Pleistocene sites in central Mexico1
- A review of the Pleistocene birds of Fossil Lake, Oregon1
- The fossil Birds of California1
- Fossil birds from the Equus Beds of Oregon1
Each of the 5 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 Spatula cyanoptera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Clément Bardot
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- 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 itSpatula through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Viellot 1816)