Pinguinus impennis

George Edward Lodge · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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
- Great aukPBDB
- Sits inside
- PinguinusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 5 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
126 occurrences of Pinguinus impennis on record. 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
126 occurrences- Pleistocene19%
- Holocene81%
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
4 formations
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The named rock units Pinguinus impennis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 121 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
290 taxa- Morus bassanus12 sites
- Uria aalge8 sites
- Phalacrocorax aristotelis7 sites
- Puffinus puffinus6 sites
- Alca torda5 sites
- Meleagris gallopavo4 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus4 sites
- Anas3 sites
- Anatidae3 sites
- Buccinum undatum3 sites
- Calonectris diomedea3 sites
- Canis3 sites
- Castor canadensis3 sites
- Cervus elaphus3 sites
- Halichoerus grypus3 sites
- Melanitta nigra3 sites
- Morrhua3 sites
- Mya (Arenomya) arenaria3 sites
- Mytilus edulis3 sites
- Odobenus rosmarus3 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus3 sites
- Ostrea edulis3 sites
- Phoca vitulina3 sites
- Phocidae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 126 sites for Pinguinus impennis, 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
23 references- Ecologia di un'estinzione Alca impenne32
- Greenway, 196729
- The Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis (L) in Greenland21
- The Great Auk and the Gannet: a Prehistoric Perspective on the Extinction of the Great Auk11
- Presence du grand pingouin, Pinguinus impennis (Aves, Charadriiformes) dans le Pleistocene du Portugal8
- Influence de l'homme prehistorique sur la repartition de certains oiseaux marins: L'exemple du grand pingouin Pinguinus impennis7
- A middle Pleistocene bird community from Saint Lucie County, Florida2
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- Campmas et al., 20101
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- A fossil of the Great Auk (Penguinus impennis) from Middle Pleistocene deposits on Bermuda1
- Gruta da Figueira Brava: Pleistocene marine mammals1
Each of the 126 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. 11 further references are not listed. 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 content3

Picture of Pinguinus impennis
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- George Edward Lodge
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Pinguinus impennis · usnm:paleobiology:623465
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Canterbury Museum
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPinguinus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)