Sterna hirundo · Epoch Explorer

The common tern is a seabird in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar distribution, its four subspecies breeding in temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America. It is strongly migratory, wintering in coastal tropical and subtropical regions. Breeding adults have light grey upperparts, white to very light grey underparts, a black cap, orange-red legs, and a narrow pointed bill. Depending on the subspecies, the bill may be mostly red with a black tip or all black. There are several similar species, including the partly sympatric Arctic tern, which can be separated on plumage details, leg and bill colour, or vocalisations.

MPF · 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: common 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 12 thousand years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

1 occurrence of Sterna hirundo 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

1 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.

Sterna hirundo and its relatives

Holocene

Where Sterna hirundo and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

9 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Sterna hirundo, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Seasonal exploitation of seabirds by Late Holocene coastal foragers: Analysis of modern and archaeological data from Western Cape, South AfricaAvery and Underhill, 1986 · Journal of Archaeological Science · journal article1

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Sterna hirundo

Source: Wikipedia/Commons
Credit: MPF
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use: the licence allows it

3D model

Source: Sketchfab
Credit: MooreLab
Licence: CC Attribution
Commercial use: cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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, “Common tern”
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 it Sterna through time Formations of the Holocene The world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758