Sterna forsteri
Forster's tern is a tern in the family Laridae. The genus name Sterna is derived from Old English "stearn", "tern", and forsteri commemorates the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster.
NaturesFan1226 · 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
- Foster's ternPBDB
- Sits inside
- SternaPBDB
- 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 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Sterna forsteri 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Sterna forsteri and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sterna forsteri and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
119 taxa- Anas acuta2 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis2 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Anser caerulescens2 sites
- Aquila pliogryps2 sites
- Aquila sodalis2 sites
- Branta canadensis2 sites
- Branta propinqua2 sites
- Bubo virginianus2 sites
- Chroicocephalus philadelphia2 sites
- Clangula hyemalis2 sites
- Cygnus paloregonus2 sites
- Dendragapus gilli2 sites
- Dendragapus nanus2 sites
- Larus oregonus2 sites
- Larus robustus2 sites
- Mareca americana2 sites
- Pelecanus erythrorhynchos2 sites
- Phalacrocorax macropus2 sites
- Phalaropus lobatus2 sites
- Phoenicopterus copei2 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps2 sites
- Spatula clypeata2 sites
- Spatula cyanoptera2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Sterna forsteri, 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- A review of the Pleistocene birds of Fossil Lake, Oregon1
- Fossil birds from the Equus Beds of Oregon1
Each of the 2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Sterna forsteri
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NaturesFan1226
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- LACM Ornithology
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Sterna forsteri · LACM:Birds:117642
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
- 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 itSterna through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nuttall 1834