Ardenna grisea
The sooty shearwater is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. In New Zealand, it is also known by its Māori name tītī, and is harvested by Māori people for muttonbird, like its relatives the wedge-tailed shearwater and the Australian short-tailed shearwater.

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
- sooty shearwaterPBDB
- Sits inside
- ArdennaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
35 occurrences of Ardenna grisea on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
35 occurrences- Pleistocene66%
- Holocene34%
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
4 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Ardenna grisea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 27 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ardenna grisea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Ardenna grisea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
853 taxa- Chendytes lawi12 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus12 sites
- Uria aalge11 sites
- Ardenna tenuirostris10 sites
- Fulmarus glacialis10 sites
- Phalacrocorax pelagicus10 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus10 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus10 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus10 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix9 sites
- Puffinus opisthomelas9 sites
- Eudyptula minor8 sites
- Larus8 sites
- Pachyptila turtur8 sites
- Gallirallus australis7 sites
- Larus dominicanus7 sites
- Melanitta fusca7 sites
- Phalacrocorax punctatus7 sites
- Anas chlorotis6 sites
- Apteryx australis6 sites
- Branta canadensis6 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis6 sites
- Corvus moriorum6 sites
- Cyanoramphus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Ardenna grisea, 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
22 references- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island5
- Pleistocene seabirds from Shiriya, northeast Japan: systematics and oceanographic context3
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand3
- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand3
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from San Miguel Island, California3
- Avian fossils from the marine Pleistocene of southern California2
- Late Holocene hunting economies in coastal southeastern Australia: Insights from the archaeological fauna of Curracurrang 1 Rockshelter, Royal National Park1
- The evolution of seabirds in the Humboldt Current: new clues from the Pliocene of Central Chile1
- Holocene fossil bird remains from subantarctic Macquarie Island1
- Human exploitation of seabirds in coastal southern Chile during the mid-Holocene1
- Seabirds and Late Pleistocene marine environments in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean1
- The fossil avifauna of Amsterdam Island, Indian Ocean1
Each of the 35 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. 10 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 Ardenna grisea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itArdenna through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)