Sterna striata
The white-fronted tern, also known as tara, sea swallow, black-billed tern, kahawai bird, southern tern, or swallow tail, was first described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789. A medium-sized tern with an all-white body including underwing and forked tail, with pale grey hues on the mantle and upper side of the wing. In breeding adults a striking black cap covers the head from forehead to nape, leaving a small white strip above the black bill.
Joe Dillon · CC BY 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
- white-fronted ternPBDB
- Sits inside
- SternaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 128 gWikidata
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.
4 occurrences of Sterna striata 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
4 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 striata and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Sterna striata and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
105 taxa- Ardenna grisea4 sites
- Eudyptula minor4 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae4 sites
- Anas chlorotis3 sites
- Anas superciliosa3 sites
- Anthus novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Apteryx australis3 sites
- Aythya novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Biziura delautouri3 sites
- Circus eylesi3 sites
- Corvus moriorum3 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae3 sites
- Cyanoramphus3 sites
- Cygnus sumnerensis3 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus3 sites
- Fulica prisca3 sites
- Gallirallus australis3 sites
- Haematopus unicolor3 sites
- Harpagornis moorei3 sites
- Larus3 sites
- Larus dominicanus3 sites
- Macronectes3 sites
- Megadyptes antipodes waitaha3 sites
- Mergus australis3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Sterna striata, 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 remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand3
- Bird extinctions and fossil bones from Mangere Island, Chatham Islands1
Each of the 4 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 content1
Picture of Sterna striata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Joe Dillon
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Sterna striata 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 itSterna through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gmelin 1789