Biziura delautouri
The New Zealand musk duck, also known as De Lautour's duck, is an extinct stiff-tailed duck native to New Zealand. It is only known from subfossil bones. It was 10 percent larger than its closest living relative, the Australian musk duck Biziura lobata, with which it has sometimes been combined.
Te Papa · 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
- New Zealand musk duckPBDB
- Sits inside
- BiziuraPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Biziura delautouri on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
4 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.
Biziura delautouri and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Biziura delautouri and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
102 taxa- Anas chlorotis4 sites
- Anas superciliosa4 sites
- Aythya novaeseelandiae4 sites
- Mergus australis4 sites
- Tadorna variegata4 sites
- Anthus novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Apteryx australis3 sites
- Ardenna grisea3 sites
- Circus eylesi3 sites
- Corvus moriorum3 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae3 sites
- Cyanoramphus3 sites
- Cygnus sumnerensis3 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus3 sites
- Eudyptula minor3 sites
- Fulica prisca3 sites
- Gallirallus australis3 sites
- Haematopus unicolor3 sites
- Harpagornis moorei3 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae3 sites
- Larus3 sites
- Larus dominicanus3 sites
- Malacorhynchus scarletti3 sites
- Megadyptes antipodes waitaha3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Biziura delautouri, 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
2 references- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand3
- The Holocene fossil waterfowl fauna of Lake Poukawa, North Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 4 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Biziura delautouri
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Te Papa
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Biziura delautouri was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itBiziura through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Forbes 1891