Numenius tahitiensis
The bristle-thighed curlew is a medium-sized shorebird that breeds in Alaska and winters on tropical Pacific islands.

Bryan Harry/NPS · 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
- bristle-thighed curlewPBDB
- Sits inside
- NumeniusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
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.
14 occurrences of Numenius tahitiensis 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
14 occurrences- Pleistocene7%
- Holocene93%
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.
Numenius tahitiensis and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Numenius tahitiensis and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
112 taxa- Fregata minor10 sites
- Gygis alba10 sites
- Pterodroma9 sites
- Phaethon rubricauda8 sites
- Puffinus nativitatis8 sites
- Anous7 sites
- Gallicolumba leonpascoi7 sites
- Ptilinopus insularis7 sites
- Zapornia atra7 sites
- Acrocephalus taiti6 sites
- Anous ceruleus5 sites
- Anous stolidus5 sites
- Ducula harrisoni5 sites
- Gallus gallus5 sites
- Nesofregetta fuliginosa5 sites
- Prosobonia sauli5 sites
- Anous minutus4 sites
- Ardenna pacifica4 sites
- Pseudobulweria rostrata4 sites
- Sula dactylatra4 sites
- Sula sula4 sites
- Tringa incana4 sites
- Bountyphaps obsoleta3 sites
- Egretta sacra3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Numenius tahitiensis, 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
7 references- The fossil birds of Henderson Island, Pitcairn Group: natural turnover and human impact, a synopsis7
- Prodromus of the fossil avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands2
- Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, south Pacific1
- Bird bones from the To’aga site: prehistoric loss of seabirds and megapodes1
- Extinction and biogeography of birds on Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia1
- Extinct and extirpated birds from Aitutaki and Atiu, southern Cook Islands1
- Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Tikopia and Anuta, Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands1
Each of the 14 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 Numenius tahitiensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Bryan Harry/NPS
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- LACM Ornithology
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Numenius tahitiensis · LACM:Birds:103118
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 itNumenius through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)