Brachyramphus
Brachyramphus is a small genus of seabirds from the North Pacific. Brachyramphus is from Ancient Greek brakhus, "short", and rhamphos, "bill". In English the species are named as "murrelets"; this is a diminutive of "murre", a word of uncertain origins, but which may imitate the call of the common guillemot.
MPF · CC BY 2.5 · 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
- AlcinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 4.7 Mya to 0 Mya.
14 occurrences of Brachyramphus 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
14 occurrences- Pliocene55%
- Pleistocene38%
- Holocene7%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Brachyramphus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
188 taxa- Ptychoramphus aleuticus6 sites
- Panalcidae5 sites
- Mancallinae4 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus4 sites
- Puffinus kanakoffi4 sites
- Cerorhinca monocerata3 sites
- Mancalla3 sites
- Melospiza melodia3 sites
- Phalacrocorax kennelli3 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus3 sites
- Synthliboramphus rineyi3 sites
- Arenaria interpres2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Branta canadensis2 sites
- Calidris alba2 sites
- Catharus guttatus2 sites
- Catharus ustulatus2 sites
- Cepphus columba2 sites
- Cerorhinca reai2 sites
- Charadrius nivosus2 sites
- Charadrius vociferus2 sites
- Chondestes grammacus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Brachyramphus, 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
5 references- Fossil birds of the San Diego Formation, Late Pliocene, Blancan, San Diego County, California9
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits2
- A zooarchaeological study at Buldir Island, Western Aleutians, Alaska1
- A collection of bird remains from the Pliocene of San Diego, California1
- New avian records for the Pliocene of California1
Each of the 14 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. 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 Brachyramphus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- MPF
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Brachyramphus 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 itAlcinae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brandt 1837