Aplonis
Aplonis is a genus of starlings. These are essentially island species of Indonesia and Oceania, although some species' ranges extend to the Malay Peninsula, southern Vietnam and northeastern Queensland. The typical adult Aplonis starling is fairly uniformly plumaged in black, brown or dark green, sometimes with a metallic gloss. The eye ring is often distinctively coloured. Immatures of several species have dark streaked pale underparts.

Kai Squires · 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- Sits inside
- SturnidaePBDB
- 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 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.
33 occurrences of Aplonis 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
33 occurrences- Pleistocene9%
- Holocene91%
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.
Aplonis and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Aplonis and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
137 taxa- Alopecoenas xanthonurus15 sites
- Pteropus14 sites
- Anous stolidus12 sites
- Phaethon lepturus12 sites
- Porzana11 sites
- Ptilinopus roseicapilla11 sites
- Squamata11 sites
- Emballonura semicaudata10 sites
- Rattus exulans10 sites
- Aerodramus vanikorensis9 sites
- Gallus gallus9 sites
- Gallirallus8 sites
- Gygis alba candida8 sites
- Megapodius laperouse8 sites
- Passeriformes8 sites
- Zapornia tabuensis8 sites
- Amaurornis cinerea7 sites
- Ducula7 sites
- Myzomela rubratra7 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri7 sites
- Rallidae7 sites
- Zosterops conspicillatus7 sites
- Anous ceruleus6 sites
- Anous minutus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Aplonis, 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
11 references- The prehistory of vertebrates, especially birds, on Tinian, Aguiguan, and Rota, Northern Mariana Islands11
- Fossil and archaeological avifauna of Niue Island, Pacific Ocean5
- Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact4
- The prehistory and biogeography of terrestrial vertebrates on Guam, Mariana Islands3
- Extinct and extirpated birds from Rota, Mariana Islands3
- Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Tikopia and Anuta, Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands2
- Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, south Pacific1
- Biogeography and prehistoric exploitation of birds from Fais Island, Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia1
- New species and records of birds (Aves: Megapodiidae, Columbidae) from an archeological site on Lifuka, Tonga1
- A new species of starling (Sturnidae, Aplonis) from an archaeological site on Huahine, Society Islands1
- Extinction of birds in eastern Polynesia: A review of the record, and comparison with other Pacific island groups1
Each of the 33 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 content2
Picture of Aplonis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Kai Squires
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it

CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- NMNH - Division of Birds
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Aplonis atrifusca · USNM:BIRDS:USNM 498061
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Aplonis”
- 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 itSturnidae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gould 1836