Oxyura jamaicensis
The ruddy duck is a species of duck, one of six extant species of stiff-tailed duck. In the 1940s, the ruddy duck was introduced to the United Kingdom, where it established a population. Outside the Americas, the ruddy duck is considered a highly invasive species, prompting many countries to initiate culling projects to eradicate it from the native ecosystem.

Dick Daniels ( http://carolinabirds.org/ ) · 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- Also called
- Ruddy duckPBDB
- Sits inside
- OxyuraPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 499 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 2 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 14 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 210 ka to 0 Mya.
11 occurrences of Oxyura jamaicensis 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene82%
- Holocene18%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Oxyura jamaicensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Oxyura jamaicensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Oxyura jamaicensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
488 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos6 sites
- Fulica americana6 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps6 sites
- Aythya affinis5 sites
- Branta canadensis5 sites
- Equus5 sites
- Pelecanus erythrorhynchos5 sites
- Aechmophorus occidentalis4 sites
- Aenocyon dirus4 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus4 sites
- Ardea herodias4 sites
- Bucephala albeola4 sites
- Buteo4 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus4 sites
- Numenius americanus4 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus4 sites
- Podiceps nigricollis4 sites
- Rallus limicola4 sites
- Spatula clypeata4 sites
- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Anas3 sites
- Anser caerulescens3 sites
- Anser rossii3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Oxyura jamaicensis, 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
10 references- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna2
- New Record of Capybara (Rodentia: Caviidae: Hydrochoerinae) from the Pleistocene of San Diego County, California with Remarks on Their Biogeography and Dispersal in the Pleistocene of Western North America1
- Avian material from Rancho del Oro, a Pleistocene locality in San Diego County, California1
- A late Pleistocene Bird community at the northern edge of the tropics in Sonora, Mexico1
- Taphonomy of a late Pleistocene carnivore den, Dade County, Florida1
- The Camp Cady Local Fauna: Paleoenvironment of the Lake Manix Basin1
- Notes on fossil and subfossil birds1
- Fossil birds from Manix Lake, California1
- A review of the Pleistocene birds of Fossil Lake, Oregon1
- The fossil Birds of California1
Each of the 11 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 Oxyura jamaicensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dick Daniels ( http://carolinabirds.org/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Ruddy duck”
- 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 itOxyura through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)