Averostra
Theropoda is one of the three major clades of dinosaurs, alongside Ornithischia and Sauropodomorpha. Theropods, both extant and extinct, are characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. They are generally classed as saurischian dinosaurs, placing them closer to sauropodomorphs than to ornithischians. They were ancestrally carnivorous, although a number of theropod groups evolved to become herbivores and omnivores. Many members of the subgroup Coelurosauria were covered with feathers, and it is possible that they were also present in other theropods. In the Jurassic, birds evolved from small specialized coelurosaurian theropods, to about 11,000 living species, making theropods the only group of dinosaurs that remain.

Uncredited · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- NeotheropodaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Theropoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 227 million years on record.
The record covers at least 227.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 0 Mya.
12,000+ occurrences of Averostra 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
12,000 occurrences read- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassic3%
- Early Cretaceous6%
- Late Cretaceous20%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene4%
- Oligocene2%
- Miocene8%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene37%
- Holocene14%
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. The read hit its cap, so every figure above is a floor and the shares are of the occurrences read. More on what this infers.
Found in
at least 848 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group275
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group213
- Morrison Formation178
- San Diego Formation155
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group142
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group106
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The named rock units Averostra has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. The read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 824 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 6,151 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
2,448 taxa- Aves55 sites
- Bovidae49 sites
- Mammalia43 sites
- Reptilia43 sites
- Clarias32 sites
- Gazella30 sites
- Equus27 sites
- Amphibia26 sites
- Hipparion26 sites
- Alcelaphini25 sites
- Cercopithecidae25 sites
- Osteichthyes25 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus24 sites
- Canis23 sites
- Hyaenidae22 sites
- Struthio22 sites
- Tragelaphus22 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius21 sites
- Suidae21 sites
- Giraffidae19 sites
- Struthio camelus19 sites
- Giraffa jumae18 sites
- Libytherium maurusium18 sites
- Theropoda18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,011 sites for Averostra, and this reads 240 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
at least 2,639 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece261
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula203
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)163
- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island162
- The fossil birds of Henderson Island, Pitcairn Group: natural turnover and human impact, a synopsis147
- Fossil birds of the San Diego Formation, Late Pliocene, Blancan, San Diego County, California131
- Late Pleistocene-Holocene non-passerine avifauna of Liang Bua (Flores, Indonesia)124
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand115
- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina114
- The paleogeographic and stratigraphic distribution of ceratopsids (Ornithischia) in the Upper Judith River Group of western Canada101
- Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves96
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections92
Each of the 12,000 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. That read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 2,627 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 content1
Picture of Averostra
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Averostra 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Theropoda”
- 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 itNeotheropoda through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Paul 2002