Spatula discors
The blue-winged teal is a species of bird in the duck, goose, and swan family Anatidae. One of the smaller members of the dabbling duck group, it occurs in North America, where it breeds from southern Alaska to Nova Scotia, and south to northern Texas. It winters along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and south into the Caribbean islands and Central America.

Alan D. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- blue-winged 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 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
16 occurrences of Spatula discors 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
16 occurrences- Pliocene14%
- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene6%
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
4 formations
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Tamiami Formation1
- Wicomico Formation1
- Okeechobee Formation1
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The named rock units Spatula discors has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Spatula discors and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Spatula discors and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,076 taxa- Podilymbus podiceps12 sites
- Spatula clypeata10 sites
- Aythya collaris9 sites
- Meleagris gallopavo9 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus9 sites
- Aix sponsa8 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius8 sites
- Anas acuta7 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos7 sites
- Bucephala albeola7 sites
- Colaptes auratus7 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus6 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos6 sites
- Dasypus bellus6 sites
- Falco sparverius6 sites
- Rallus limicola6 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus6 sites
- Sylvilagus6 sites
- Aenocyon dirus5 sites
- Anas crecca5 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis5 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis5 sites
- Corvus ossifragus5 sites
- Cyanocitta cristata5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Spatula discors, 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
15 references- Two new late Blancan avifaunas from Florida and the extinction of wetland birds in the Plio-Pleistocene2
- A middle Pleistocene bird community from Saint Lucie County, Florida1
- The diversity and biogeography of late Pleistocene birds from the lowland Neotropics1
- Late Pleistocene birds from Kingston Saltpeter Cave, southern Appalachian Mountains, Georgia1
- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina1
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida1
- The Pleistocene vertebrate fauna of Reddick, Florida1
- The fossil avifauna of Itchtucknee River, Florida1
- Notes on fossil and subfossil birds1
- The Pleistocene avifauna of Arredondo, Florida1
Each of the 16 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. 3 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 Spatula discors
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alan D. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Spatula discors 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 itSpatula through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1766)