Nycticorax mauritianus
The Mauritius night heron is an extinct night heron species from Mauritius. It is only known by seven subfossil bone remains consisted of cranium, pelvis, coracoid, ulna, radius, and tarsometatarsus found in Mare aux Songes. Only the coracoid and the tarsometatarsus are left today. It was scientifically described in 1893 by Edward Newton and Hans Gadow from the University of Cambridge. Newton and Gadow measured the tarsometatarsus with 81 to 87 mm. It became presumedly extinct shortly after it was first mentioned by François Leguat in 1693 who described them as a "great flight of bitterns".
Edward Newton & Hans Gadow · 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
- Mauritius night heronPBDB
- Sits inside
- NycticoraxPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Ardeidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Ardeidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ardeidae
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka 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 Nycticorax mauritianus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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- 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.
Nycticorax mauritianus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Nycticorax mauritianus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
16 taxa- Aphanapteryx bonasia2 sites
- Fulica newtonii2 sites
- Lophopsittacus mauritianus2 sites
- Alectroenas nitidissimus1 site
- Alopochen mauritianus1 site
- Anas theodori1 site
- Circus maillardi1 site
- Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus1 site
- Egretta garzetta dimorpha1 site
- Microcarbo africanus1 site
- Nesoenas mayeri1 site
- Numenius phaeopus1 site
- Otus sauzieri1 site
- Papasula abbotti1 site
- Phoenicopterus roseus1 site
- Raphus cucullatus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Nycticorax mauritianus, 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
2 references- A synopsis of the pre-human avifauna of the Mascarene Islands1
- On additional bones of the Dodo and other extinct birds of Mauritius obtained by Mr. Théodore Sauzier1
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 content1
Picture of Nycticorax mauritianus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Edward Newton & Hans Gadow
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nycticorax mauritianus 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
- 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 itNycticorax through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Newton and Gadow 1893)