Apodidae

The Apodidae, or swifts, form a family of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes along with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely related to the true swifts but form a separate family, the Hemiprocnidae.

Apodidae

Paweł Kuźniar ( Jojo_1 , Jojo ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
swiftPBDB
Sits inside
CaprimulgiformesPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB
Life habit
volantPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 315 million years on record.

The record covers at least 315.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 323.4 Mya to 0 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 2 of 125 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 1 of 125 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 125 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 125 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 125 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 125 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 2 of 125 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 125 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 125 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 125 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 125 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 125 occurrencesOligocene — about 1 of 125 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 125 occurrencesPliocene — about 2 of 125 occurrencesPleistocene — about 53 of 125 occurrences330–319 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences319–308 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences308–297 Mya — about 1 occurrence275–264 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences264–253 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences176–165 Mya — about 2 occurrences44–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–22 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences22–11 Mya — about 1 occurrence11–0 Mya — about 118 occurrences315.2 Mya11.7 ka330 Mya0 Mya

125 occurrences of Apodidae on record. 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

125 occurrences

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

6 formations

Ukureyskaya — 52.52°N, 116.72°EVarswater — 32.98°S, 18.15°EPradineaux — 43.51°N, 6.63°EOttweiler Schichten — 49.37°N, 7.18°EBannockburn — 44.91°S, 169.86°Efacies à Congeria — 45.05°N, 7.93°E

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The named rock units Apodidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 118 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

1,112 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 104 sites for Apodidae, 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

35 references

Each of the 125 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. 23 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 content2

Picture of Apodidae

Credit
Paweł Kuźniar ( Jojo_1 , Jojo )
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
bcbirds
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

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

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 itCaprimulgiformes through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hartert 1897