Cepphus grylle
The black guillemot or tystie is a medium-sized seabird of the Alcidae family, native throughout northern Atlantic coasts and eastern North American coasts. It is resident in much of its range, but large populations from the high arctic migrate southwards in winter. The bird can be seen in and around its breeding habitat of rocky shores, cliffs and islands in single or smalls groups of pairs. They feed mainly by diving towards the sea floor feeding on fish, crustaceans or other benthic invertebrates. They are listed on the IUCN red list as a species of least concern.

Charles J. Sharp · 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
- black guillemotPBDB
- Sits inside
- CepphusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 381 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Cepphus grylle on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
16 occurrences- Pleistocene19%
- Holocene81%
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.
Cepphus grylle and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Cepphus grylle and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
131 taxa- Rangifer tarandus10 sites
- Phoca hispida9 sites
- Somateria mollissima9 sites
- Ursus maritimus9 sites
- Erignathus barbatus8 sites
- Larus8 sites
- Odobenus rosmarus8 sites
- Ovibos moschatus8 sites
- Vulpes lagopus7 sites
- Balaena mysticetus6 sites
- Lepus arcticus6 sites
- Branta5 sites
- Fulmarus glacialis5 sites
- Alle alle4 sites
- Canis4 sites
- Laridae4 sites
- Larus hyperboreus4 sites
- Somateria spectabilis4 sites
- Uria lomvia4 sites
- Anatidae3 sites
- Anser caerulescens3 sites
- Aves3 sites
- Branta bernicla3 sites
- Canis familiaris3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Cepphus grylle, 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
8 references- Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas6
- Birds in Finnish prehistory2
- Bird bones from Jettböle I, a site in the Neolithic Åland archipelago in the northern Baltic2
- Seabirds and Late Pleistocene marine environments in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean2
- Animals and the precontact Inuit of Labrador: an examination using faunal remains, space and myth1
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- Thule Subsistence and Optimal Diet: A Zooarchaeological Test of a Linear Programming Model1
- Porden Point: An Intrasite Approach to Settlement System Analysis1
Each of the 16 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 content3
Picture of Cepphus grylle
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cepphus grylle · l-jz:JZ:28
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- The Watt Institution
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itCepphus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)