Phalaropus tricolor
Wilson's phalarope is a small wader. This bird, the largest of the phalaropes, breeds in the prairies of North America in western Canada and the western United States. It is migratory, wintering in inland salt lakes near the Andes in Argentina. They are passage migrants through Central America around March/April and again during September/October. The species is a rare vagrant to western Europe.

VJAnderson · 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
- Wilson's phalaropePBDB
- Sits inside
- PhalaropusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 68.1 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Phalaropus tricolor 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Phalaropus tricolor and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Phalaropus tricolor and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
300 taxa- Athene cunicularia4 sites
- Charadrius vociferus4 sites
- Phalaropus lobatus4 sites
- Anas bahamensis3 sites
- Arenaria interpres3 sites
- Charadrius semipalmatus3 sites
- Coragyps atratus3 sites
- Dendrocygna autumnalis3 sites
- Falco peregrinus3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Geranoaetus melanoleucus3 sites
- Tringa flavipes3 sites
- Tringa melanoleuca3 sites
- Tringa solitaria3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Zenaida auriculata3 sites
- Actitis macularius2 sites
- Aenocyon dirus2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Burhinus superciliaris2 sites
- Buteo2 sites
- Cairina moschata2 sites
- Calidris canutus2 sites
- Calidris himantopus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Phalaropus tricolor, 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
4 references- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- The diversity and biogeography of late Pleistocene birds from the lowland Neotropics1
- The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru1
- The late Pleistocene avifauna of La Carolina, southwestern Ecuador1
Each of the 4 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Phalaropus tricolor
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- VJAnderson
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phalaropus tricolor was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource 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 itPhalaropus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Vieillot 1819)