Tachybaptus
Tachybaptus is a genus of small birds of the grebe family. The genus name means "quick diving"; it is from Ancient Greek takhys "quick" and bapto "I dip". It has representatives over much of the world, including the tropics.

Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE · 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- Sits inside
- PodicipedidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
7 occurrences of Tachybaptus 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
7 occurrences- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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.
Tachybaptus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Tachybaptus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
357 taxa- Anas5 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos3 sites
- Aythya3 sites
- Coragyps atratus3 sites
- Equus3 sites
- Falco3 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Accipitridae2 sites
- Anas crecca2 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Ardea2 sites
- Ardea alba2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Aythya nyroca2 sites
- Bubo virginianus2 sites
- Buteo2 sites
- Cairina moschata2 sites
- Calidris2 sites
- Calidris minutilla2 sites
- Cathartes aura2 sites
- Charadriiformes2 sites
- Charadrius semipalmatus2 sites
- Colinus virginianus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Tachybaptus, 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- Exploitation of a seasonal resource: bird hunting during the late Natufian at Shubayqa 11
- The fossil bird associations from the early Middle Pleistocene of the Ragusa province (SE Sicily, Italy)1
- First record of avian extinctions from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of Timor Leste1
- Prehistoric exploitation of birds on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico1
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula1
- Huescar-1 (Granada, Espana): Avance de la lista de aves y consiguientes conjeturas sobre paleoambiente y paleogeografia1
- The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru1
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 content3
Picture of Tachybaptus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Tachybaptus ruficollis · UMZC:Vertebrates:208.BA
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, “Tachybaptus”
- 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 itPodicipedidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Reichenbach 1853