Branta bernicla nigricans
The brant or brent goose is a small goose in the genus Branta. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra.

Needsmoreritalin · CC BY-SA 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
- brantPBDB
- Sits inside
- Branta berniclaPBDB
- Diet
- folivore, granivorePBDB, for Anserinae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anserinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- freshwaterPBDB, for Anserinae
Time the record covers
At most 760 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 14 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Branta bernicla nigricans on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Branta bernicla nigricans has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Branta bernicla nigricans and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Branta bernicla nigricans and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
162 taxa- Branta canadensis3 sites
- Callipepla californica3 sites
- Cathartes aura3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus3 sites
- Sturnella neglecta3 sites
- Accipiter cooperii2 sites
- Accipiter striatus2 sites
- Antigone canadensis2 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos2 sites
- Asio2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Breagyps clarki2 sites
- Bubo virginianus2 sites
- Buteo2 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis2 sites
- Buteo regalis2 sites
- Buteo swainsoni2 sites
- Buteogallus fragilis2 sites
- Caracara cheriway2 sites
- Ciconia maltha2 sites
- Circus cyaneus2 sites
- Colaptes auratus cafer2 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Branta bernicla nigricans, 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 comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California2
- Avian fossils from the marine Pleistocene of southern California1
Each of the 3 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Branta bernicla nigricans
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Needsmoreritalin
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Branta bernicla nigricans 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 itBranta bernicla through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lawrence 1846)