Thambetochen
Thambetochen is an extinct genus of moa-nalo duck. It contains two species, the Maui Nui moa-nalo and the smaller O'ahu moa-nalo.

David Eickhoff from Pearl City, Hawaii, USA · CC BY 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
- AnatidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Thambetochen on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Thambetochen has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Thambetochen and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Thambetochen and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
32 taxa- Corvus4 sites
- Apteribis glenos3 sites
- Branta3 sites
- Ardenna pacifica2 sites
- Nerita2 sites
- Passeriformes2 sites
- Pterodroma hypoleuca2 sites
- Rallidae2 sites
- Strigiformes2 sites
- Akialoa obscura1 site
- Anas wyvilliana1 site
- Aves1 site
- Buteo1 site
- Buteo solitarius1 site
- Chaetoptila angustipluma1 site
- Chasiempis sandwichensis1 site
- Chloridops1 site
- Chlorodrepanis virens1 site
- Circus dossenus1 site
- Ciridops1 site
- Drepanidini1 site
- Fulica americana1 site
- Gallus gallus1 site
- Grallistrix geleches1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Thambetochen, 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
3 references- Prodromus of the fossil avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands4
- Descriptions of Thirty-Two New Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands: Part I. Non-Passeriformes1
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from the Island of Oahu, Hawaiian Islands1
Each of the 6 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 Thambetochen
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- David Eickhoff from Pearl City, Hawaii, USA
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Thambetochen 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 itAnatidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Olson and Wetmore 1976