Ardea
Searched as Ardea grandis arborea. The Paleobiology Database treats Ardea as the accepted name.
Ardea is a genus of herons. These herons are generally large in size, typically 80–100 cm or more in length.

JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ ) · 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
- heronPBDB
- Sits inside
- ArdeidaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Ardeidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Ardeidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ardeidae
Time the record covers
At most 2.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 13.82 Mya and 11.63 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Ardea on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Miocene100%
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.
Ardea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Ardea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,885 taxa- Anas22 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos22 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus19 sites
- Buteo18 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps18 sites
- Branta canadensis17 sites
- Larus17 sites
- Tyto alba17 sites
- Antigone canadensis16 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis16 sites
- Corvus corax15 sites
- Equus15 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus15 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus15 sites
- Phalacrocorax15 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos14 sites
- Numenius americanus14 sites
- Anas acuta13 sites
- Anser caerulescens13 sites
- Anserinae13 sites
- Bubo virginianus13 sites
- Fulica americana13 sites
- Anatinae12 sites
- Cathartes aura12 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 70 sites for Ardea, 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 content2
Picture of Ardea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itArdeidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758