Eclectus infectus
The oceanic eclectus is an extinct parrot species which occurred on Tonga, Vanuatu and possibly on Fiji. Its closest living relative is the Moluccan eclectus, which has proportionally larger wings than the oceanic eclectus parrot. The fossil material unearthed in November 1989 in Late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits on 'Eua, Lifuka, 'Uiha and Vanuatu and described in 2006 by David William Steadman include a complete femur, five radii, a quadrate bone, a mandible, a coracoid, two sterna, two humeri, two ulnae, two tibiotarsi, a carpometacarpus, a tarsometatarsus, and three pedal phalanges.

An artist of the Malaspina Expedition · Public Domain · 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
- oceanic parrotPBDB
- Sits inside
- EclectusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
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.
11 occurrences of Eclectus infectus 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene17%
- Holocene83%
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.
Eclectus infectus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Eclectus infectus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
68 taxa- Didunculus placopedetes9 sites
- Alopecoenas stairi5 sites
- Ducula pacifica5 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis5 sites
- Megapodius5 sites
- Megapodius alimentum5 sites
- Gallus gallus4 sites
- Megapodius pritchardii4 sites
- Todiramphus chloris4 sites
- Aplonis tabuensis3 sites
- Ardenna pacifica3 sites
- Columbidae3 sites
- Ducula shutleri3 sites
- Foulehaio carunculatus3 sites
- Lalage maculosa3 sites
- Megapodiidae3 sites
- Myzomela cardinalis3 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus3 sites
- Ptilinopus perousii3 sites
- Turdus poliocephalus3 sites
- Vini australis3 sites
- Caloenas2 sites
- Cettia2 sites
- Clytorhynchus vitiensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Eclectus infectus, 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
3 references- A new species of extinct parrot (Psittacidae: Eclectus) from Tonga and Vanuatu, South Pacific6
- Prehistoric avifaunas from the Kingdom of Tonga4
- Avifauna from the Teouma Lapita site, Efate Island, Vanuatu, including a new genus and species of megapode1
Each of the 11 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 Eclectus infectus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- An artist of the Malaspina Expedition
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Eclectus infectus 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 itEclectus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Steadman 2006