Spizaetus
Spizaetus is the typical hawk-eagle birds of prey genus found in the tropics of the Americas. It was however used to indicate a group of tropical eagles that included species occurring in southern and southeastern Asia and one representative of this genus in the rainforests of West Africa. The Old World species have been separated into the genus Nisaetus. Several species have a prominent head crest. These are medium to large-sized raptors, most being between 55 and 75 cm long, and tend to be long-tailed and slender.

Uncredited · CC BY 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
- hawk-eaglePBDB
- Sits inside
- AccipitridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
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 0 Mya.
14 occurrences of Spizaetus 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
14 occurrences- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene90%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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 Spizaetus 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.
Spizaetus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Spizaetus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
349 taxa- Aquila chrysaetos7 sites
- Accipiter cooperii6 sites
- Bubo virginianus6 sites
- Ciconia maltha6 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos6 sites
- Falco sparverius6 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus6 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus6 sites
- Tyto alba6 sites
- Antigone canadensis5 sites
- Ardea herodias5 sites
- Buteo5 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis5 sites
- Buteo swainsoni5 sites
- Buteogallus fragilis5 sites
- Callipepla californica5 sites
- Cathartes aura5 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Falco columbarius5 sites
- Meleagris californica5 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps5 sites
- Sturnella neglecta5 sites
- Teratornis merriami5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Spizaetus, 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
9 references- Raptor and owl bone from Niah Caves, Sarawak: identifications and morphological variation in the humerus and tarsometatarsus of selected raptors4
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California2
- The fossil Birds of California2
- Taphonomy of a late Pleistocene carnivore den, Dade County, Florida1
- Two new late Blancan avifaunas from Florida and the extinction of wetland birds in the Plio-Pleistocene1
- A late Pleistocene (Wisconsinan) avifauna from West Palm Beach, Florida1
- An Early Pleistocene Eagle from Nebraska1
- Avian fossils from three Pleistocene sites in central Mexico1
- The avifauna associated with human remains at Rancho la Brea, California1
Each of the 14 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 Spizaetus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Spizaetus grinnelli · UCMP:V:12175
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Spizaetus”
- 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 itAccipitridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vieillot 1816