Numenius arquata
The Eurasian curlew or common curlew is a very large wader in the family Scolopacidae. It is one of the most widespread of the curlews, breeding across temperate Europe and Asia. In Europe, this species is often referred to just as the "curlew", and in Scotland known as the "whaup" in Scots.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- Eurasian curlewPBDB
- Sits inside
- NumeniusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 869 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Numenius arquata 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
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
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The named rock units Numenius arquata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Numenius arquata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Numenius arquata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
48 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Mergus merganser2 sites
- Mergus serrator2 sites
- Phalacrocorax carbo2 sites
- Alca torda1 site
- Alcelaphus buselaphus1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anas acuta1 site
- Anas crecca1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anser1 site
- Anser albifrons1 site
- Anser fabalis1 site
- Ardea cinerea1 site
- Arenaria interpres1 site
- Aves1 site
- Aythya ferina1 site
- Barbus bynni1 site
- Bos taurus1 site
- Branta1 site
- Branta bernicla1 site
- Calidris pugnax1 site
- Cepphus grylle1 site
- Corvus corone1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Numenius arquata, 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
2 references- Bird bones from Jettböle I, a site in the Neolithic Åland archipelago in the northern Baltic1
- Relationships of the Late Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Kom Ombo, Upper Egypt1
Each of the 2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Numenius arquata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- 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 itNumenius through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)