Uria aalge
The common murre or common guillemot is a large auk, one of several species called murre or guillemot. It has a circumpolar distribution, occurring in low-Arctic and boreal waters in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its time at sea, only coming to land to breed on rocky cliff shores or islands.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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 murrePBDB
- Sits inside
- UriaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 108 gWikidata
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.
36 occurrences of Uria aalge 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
36 occurrences- Pleistocene75%
- Holocene25%
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
5 formations
- Palos Verdes Sand Formation2
- Acredale Formation1
- Kempsville Formation1
- Chillesford Clay Formation1
- Norwich Crag Formation1
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The named rock units Uria aalge has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 30 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Uria aalge and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Uria aalge and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
776 taxa- Fulmarus glacialis12 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus12 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus12 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus12 sites
- Ardenna grisea11 sites
- Melanitta fusca11 sites
- Anser caerulescens10 sites
- Chendytes lawi10 sites
- Podiceps nigricollis10 sites
- Branta canadensis9 sites
- Corvus corax9 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus9 sites
- Fratercula dowi8 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus8 sites
- Melanitta perspicillata8 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus8 sites
- Pinguinus impennis8 sites
- Puffinus opisthomelas8 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris7 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis7 sites
- Larus7 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus7 sites
- Cepphus columba6 sites
- Larus californicus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 36 sites for Uria aalge, 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
19 references- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island5
- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna5
- Seabirds and Late Pleistocene marine environments in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean5
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from San Miguel Island, California4
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)3
- Pleistocene seabirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan: systematics and oceanographic context1
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- A zooarchaeological study at Buldir Island, Western Aleutians, Alaska1
- Preliminary List of the Marine Fishes and Other Vertebrate Remains from the Late Pleistocene Palos Verdes Sand Formation at Costa Mesa, Orange County, California1
- A catalogue of late Quaternary vertebrates from California: Part One, nonmarine lower vertebrate and avian taxa1
- Quaternary vertebrates from Shiriya area, Shimokita Pininsula, northeastern Japan1
- The fauna and paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene marine sediments of southeastern Virginia1
Each of the 36 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. 7 further references are not listed. 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 Uria aalge
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Uria aalge 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 itUria through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pontoppidan 1763)