Anser rossii
Ross's goose is a white goose with black wingtips and a relatively short neck. It is the smallest of the three white geese that breed in North America. It is similar in appearance to a white-phase snow goose, but about 40% smaller. Other differences from the snow goose are that the bill is smaller in proportion to its body and lacks "black lips". Like snow geese, Ross's geese may exhibit a darker "blue" phase or morph, though this is extremely rare.

Andrew C · 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- Also called
- Ross's goosePBDB
- Sits inside
- AnserPBDB
- Diet
- folivore, granivorePBDB, for Anserinae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anserinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Anserinae
- Mass
- 1.68 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
9 occurrences of Anser rossii 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
9 occurrences- Pleistocene22%
- Holocene78%
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.
Anser rossii and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Anser rossii and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
241 taxa- Numenius americanus8 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos7 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos7 sites
- Larus7 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus7 sites
- Anatinae6 sites
- Anser caerulescens6 sites
- Anserinae6 sites
- Antigone canadensis6 sites
- Limosa fedoa6 sites
- Melanitta6 sites
- Phalacrocorax6 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus6 sites
- Uria6 sites
- Aechmophorus5 sites
- Anas5 sites
- Ardea herodias5 sites
- Aythya marila5 sites
- Branta canadensis5 sites
- Buteo5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Aythya4 sites
- Gavia immer4 sites
- Gavia stellata4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Anser rossii, 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
4 references- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna6
- Variability in Thule Inuit Subsistence Economy: A Faunal Analysis of OkRn-1, Banks Island, NWT1
- A review of the Pleistocene birds of Fossil Lake, Oregon1
- The fossil Birds of California1
Each of the 9 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 Anser rossii
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andrew C
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anser rossii 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 itAnser through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cassin 1861)