Gyps
Gyps is a genus of Old World vultures that was proposed by Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809. Its members are sometimes known as griffon vultures. Gyps vultures have a slim head, a long slender neck with downy feathers, and a ruff around the neck formed by long buoyant feathers. The crown of their big beaks is a little compressed, and their big dark nostrils are set transverse to the beak. They have six or seven wing feathers, of which the first is the shortest and the fourth the longest.
Naumann · 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
- vulturePBDB
- Sits inside
- AccipitridaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
Time the record covers
At least 5.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 0 Mya.
13 occurrences of Gyps 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
13 occurrences- Miocene8%
- Pleistocene85%
- Holocene8%
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 Gyps has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Gyps and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Gyps and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
163 taxa- Corvus5 sites
- Turdus5 sites
- Columba oenas4 sites
- Columba palumbus4 sites
- Corvus monedula4 sites
- Scolopax rusticola4 sites
- Tyto alba4 sites
- Athene cretensis3 sites
- Columba3 sites
- Falco tinnunculus3 sites
- Garrulus glandarius3 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus3 sites
- Accipiter gentilis2 sites
- Aegolius funereus2 sites
- Alectoris rufa2 sites
- Apus melba2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Buteo buteo2 sites
- Candiacervus cretensis2 sites
- Chloris chloris2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Emberiza2 sites
- Erithacus rubecula2 sites
- Falco eleonorae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Gyps, 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- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece6
- Late Pleistocene birds from Binagada (Azerbaijan) in collection of the National Museum of Natural History (Kyiv, Ukraine)1
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- The Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Llucmajor, Mallorca): a singular deposit bearing an exceptional well preserved Early Pleistocene vertebrate fauna1
- Exceptional soft tissue fossilization of a Pleistocene vulture (Gyps fulvus): new evidence for emplacement temperatures of pyroclastic flow deposits1
- Remarks on new proboscidean remains from the classical Late Miocene locality of Pikermi and their associated fauna1
- Presence of the Northern Bald Ibis Geronticus eremita (L.) during the Holocene in the Ardèche valley, southern France1
- Pleistocene bird fauna from Bir Tarfawi (Egyptian western desert)1
Each of the 13 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 content2
Picture of Gyps
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Naumann
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Gyps coprotheres · l-jz:JZ:7
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gyps”
- 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 itAccipitridae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Savigny 1809