Falco

Falcons are birds of prey in the genus Falco, which includes about 40 species. Some small species of falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some that hover while hunting are called kestrels. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.

Falco

Shantanu Kuveskar · 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
falconPBDB
Sits inside
FalconinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Falconidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Falconidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Falconidae

Time the record covers

At least 45 million years on record.

The record covers at least 45.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 51.1 Mya to 0 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 200 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 200 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 200 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 200 occurrencesPleistocene — about 156 of 200 occurrences52–50 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences50–49 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–45 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences12–10 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences10–8.7 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences8.7–7.0 Mya — about 1 occurrence7.0–5.2 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences5.2–3.5 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences3.5–1.7 Mya — about 7 occurrences1.7–0 Mya — about 189 occurrences45.9 Mya11.7 ka52 Mya0 Mya

200 occurrences of Falco on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

200 occurrences

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

6 formations

Wicomico — 29.60°N, 82.42°WSan Pedro — 33.75°N, 118.28°WHillgrove — 45.13°S, 170.97°ESan Mateo — 33.20°N, 117.37°WAmerican Falls Lake Bed E — 42.80°N, 112.90°WBridger — 41.20°N, 110.50°W

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The named rock units Falco has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 192 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Falco and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Falco and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

2,113 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 128 sites for Falco, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

90 references

Each of the 200 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. 78 further references are not listed. 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 content2

Picture of Falco

Credit
Shantanu Kuveskar
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itFalconinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758