Phalacrocorax featherstoni
The Pitt shag, also known as the Pitt Island shag or Featherstone's shag, is a species of bird in the family Phalacrocoracidae. It is endemic to Pitt Island where its natural habitats are open seas and rocky shores. The bird with the color of a dark body, gray chest, yellow eyes and feet can be found in small groups in their breeding habitat or alone within 18 km from their territory searching for food. The species was close to extinction in 1905 but actions of conservation have been done ever since. The Pitt shag is threatened by habitat loss due to predation and climate change causing a decline from 1997 to 2012, but there is a recovery plan by the Department of Conservation.

Christopher Stephens · 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
- Pitt Island shagPBDB
- Sits inside
- PhalacrocoraxPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
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 Phalacrocorax featherstoni 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.
Phalacrocorax featherstoni and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Phalacrocorax featherstoni and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
15 taxa- Anthornis melanocephala1 site
- Ardenna grisea1 site
- Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae1 site
- Eudyptes1 site
- Eudyptula minor1 site
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae1 site
- Macronectes1 site
- Megalurus rufescens1 site
- Pachyptila turtur1 site
- Pachyptila vittata1 site
- Pelagodroma marina1 site
- Pelecanoides urinatrix1 site
- Pterodroma axillaris1 site
- Stercorarius antarcticus lonnbergi1 site
- Sterna striata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Phalacrocorax featherstoni, 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 content1
Picture of Phalacrocorax featherstoni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Christopher Stephens
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phalacrocorax featherstoni 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Pitt shag”
- 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 itPhalacrocorax through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Buller 1873)