Neophron percnopterus
The Egyptian vulture, also called the white scavenger vulture or pharaoh's chicken, is a small Old World vulture in the monotypic genus Neophron. It is widely distributed from the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, West Asia and India. The contrasting underwing pattern and wedge-shaped tail make it distinctive in flight as it soars in thermals during the warmer parts of the day. Egyptian vultures feed mainly on carrion but are opportunistic and will prey on small mammals, birds, and reptiles. They also feed on the eggs of other birds, breaking larger ones by tossing a large pebble onto them.

Rod Waddington · 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
- Egyptian vulturePBDB
- Sits inside
- NeophronPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 94 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Neophron percnopterus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
1 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Neophron percnopterus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Neophron percnopterus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
10 taxa- Buteo buteo insularum1 site
- Chloris chloris1 site
- Columba junoniae1 site
- Corvus corax1 site
- Coturnix gomerae1 site
- Falco1 site
- Falco tinnunculus1 site
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax1 site
- Turdus1 site
- Tyto alba gracilirostris1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Neophron percnopterus, 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 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Neophron percnopterus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rod Waddington
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itNeophron through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)