Apus balstoni
The Malagasy black swift or Madagascar swift, is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is endemic to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands.

Nigel Voaden · 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- Also called
- Madagascar swiftPBDB
- Sits inside
- ApusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Apodidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Apus balstoni 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
1 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Apus balstoni and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Apus balstoni and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
37 taxa- Accipiter henstii1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Alopochen sirabensis1 site
- Anas1 site
- Ardea humbloti1 site
- Athene superciliaris1 site
- Buteo brachypterus1 site
- Caprimulgus madagascariensis1 site
- Columbidae1 site
- Coracopsis vasa1 site
- Coua berthae1 site
- Coua cristata1 site
- Coua gigas1 site
- Coua primaeva1 site
- Coua ruficeps1 site
- Falco newtoni1 site
- Foudia madagascariensis1 site
- Fulica cristata1 site
- Haliaeetus vociferoides1 site
- Himantopus himantopus1 site
- Milvus migrans aegyptius1 site
- Mullerornis1 site
- Numida meleagris1 site
- Oena capensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Apus balstoni, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Apus balstoni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nigel Voaden
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Apus balstoni 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 itApus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Bartlett 1880)