Platalea leucorodia
The Eurasian spoonbill, or common spoonbill, is a wading bird of the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae, native to Europe, Africa and Asia. The species is partially migratory with the more northerly breeding populations mostly migrating south for the winter.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- Eurasian spoonbillPBDB
- Sits inside
- PlataleaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Threskiornithidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Threskiornithidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Threskiornithidae
- Mass
- 76 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Platalea leucorodia 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
7 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.
Found in
2 formations
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The named rock units Platalea leucorodia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Platalea leucorodia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Platalea leucorodia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
62 taxa- Alcelaphus buselaphus6 sites
- Gazella dorcas6 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius5 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos4 sites
- Bos primigenius4 sites
- Clarias4 sites
- Anas acuta3 sites
- Anas crecca3 sites
- Ardea cinerea3 sites
- Bos taurus3 sites
- Trionyx triunguis3 sites
- Anser albifrons2 sites
- Aythya ferina2 sites
- Equus asinus2 sites
- Lepus capensis2 sites
- Mareca penelope2 sites
- Mergellus albellus2 sites
- Mergus merganser2 sites
- Mergus serrator2 sites
- Phalacrocorax carbo2 sites
- Tadorna ferruginea2 sites
- Accipiter nisus1 site
- Alaudidae1 site
- Anatidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Platalea leucorodia, 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- Kom Ombo: Preliminary Report on the Fauna of Late Paleolithic Sites in Upper Egypt3
- Relationships of the Late Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Kom Ombo, Upper Egypt2
- A new Middle Pleistocene bird assemblage from Cava di Breccia di Casal Selce (Ponte Galeria, Rome, Italy)1
- Wendorf and Schild, 19761
Each of the 7 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 content1
Picture of Platalea leucorodia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Platalea leucorodia 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 itPlatalea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758