Mullerornis
Mullerornis modestus is an extinct species of elephant bird, and the only member of the genus Mullerornis.

DFoidl · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- AepyornithidaePBDB
- 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.
7 occurrences of Mullerornis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
7 occurrences- Pleistocene55%
- Holocene45%
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.
Mullerornis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Mullerornis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
121 taxa- Alopochen sirabensis5 sites
- Aepyornis3 sites
- Aldabrachelys3 sites
- Anas bernieri3 sites
- Anas erythrorhyncha3 sites
- Coracopsis vasa3 sites
- Gallinula chloropus3 sites
- Numida meleagris3 sites
- Aepyornis hildebrandti2 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Anas melleri2 sites
- Ardea alba2 sites
- Ardea humbloti2 sites
- Asio madagascariensis2 sites
- Buteo brachypterus2 sites
- Coua berthae2 sites
- Coua cristata2 sites
- Falco newtoni2 sites
- Foudia madagascariensis2 sites
- Fulica cristata2 sites
- Hippopotamus2 sites
- Otus rutilus2 sites
- Phoenicopterus roseus2 sites
- Ploceus sakalava2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Mullerornis, 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
4 references- Holocene bird subfossils from the sites of Ampasambazimba, Antsirabe and Ampoza, Madagascar: changes in the avifauna of south central Madagascar over the past few millennia3
- A new late Pleistocene subfossil site (Tsaramody, Sambaina basin, central Madagascar) with implications for the chronology of habitat and megafaunal community change on Madagascar’s Central Highlands2
- Subfossil birds from a submerged cave in southwestern Madagascar1
- New findings at Andrahomana Cave, southeastern Madagascar1
Each of the 7 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 content1
Picture of Mullerornis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- DFoidl
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mullerornis was found in Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Mullerornis”
- 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 itAepyornithidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Milne-Edwards and Grandidier 1894