Halcyon

Halcyon is a genus of the tree kingfishers, near passerine birds in the subfamily Halcyoninae.

Halcyon

Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
Sits inside
HalcyoninaePBDB
Diet
piscivore, insectivorePBDB, for Alcedinidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Alcedinidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Alcedinidae

Time the record covers

At most 118 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 9 of 9 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 9 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

9 occurrences of Halcyon 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

9 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.

Halcyon and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Halcyon and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

11 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Halcyon, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Each of the 9 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 content3

Picture of Halcyon

Credit
Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Halcyon smyrnensis · FMNH:Birds:478769

3D model

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

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 itHalcyoninae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Swainson 1821