Stercorarius antarcticus
The brown skua, also known as the Antarctic skua, Subantarctic skua, southern great skua, southern skua, or hākoakoa (Māori), is a large seabird that breeds in the subantarctic and Antarctic zones and moves farther north when not breeding. Its taxonomy is highly complex and a matter of dispute, with some splitting it into two or three species: Falkland skua, Tristan skua, and subantarctic skua. To further confuse, it hybridizes with both the south polar and Chilean skuas, and the entire group has been considered to be a subspecies of the great skua, a species otherwise restricted to the Northern Hemisphere.
Liam Quinn from Canada · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- brown skuaPBDB
- Sits inside
- StercorariusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Stercorarius antarcticus 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- Holocene100%
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.
Stercorarius antarcticus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Stercorarius antarcticus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
111 taxa- Pelecanoides urinatrix4 sites
- Ardenna grisea3 sites
- Eudyptula minor3 sites
- Macronectes giganteus3 sites
- Pachyptila turtur3 sites
- Pelagodroma marina3 sites
- Pygoscelis adeliae3 sites
- Anas superciliosa2 sites
- Anthus novaeseelandiae2 sites
- Apteryx australis2 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris2 sites
- Gallirallus australis2 sites
- Haematopus unicolor2 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae2 sites
- Larus2 sites
- Larus dominicanus2 sites
- Leptonychotes weddellii2 sites
- Macronectes2 sites
- Pachyptila vittata2 sites
- Phalacrocorax carunculatus2 sites
- Phalacrocorax punctatus2 sites
- Puffinus2 sites
- Pygoscelis papua2 sites
- Sterna striata2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Stercorarius antarcticus, 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- Holocene fossil bird remains from subantarctic Macquarie Island1
- Mid-Holocene skua remains from King George Island, Antarctica1
- Holocene environmental changes and the seal (Phocidae) fauna of the Baltic Sea: coming, going and staying1
- Mid-Holocene macrofossil-bearing raised marine beaches at Potter Peninsula, King George Island, South Shetland Islands1
- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand1
- Fossils indicate Pelecanoides georgicus had large colonies at Mason Bay, Stewart Island, New Zealand1
- Bird extinctions and fossil bones from Mangere Island, Chatham Islands1
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 Stercorarius antarcticus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Liam Quinn from Canada
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Stercorarius antarcticus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Brown skua”
- 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 itStercorarius through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lesson 1831)