Pluvialis dominica
The American golden plover is a medium-sized plover. The genus name is Latin and means relating to rain, from pluvia, "rain". It was believed that golden plovers flocked when rain was imminent. The species name dominica refers to Santo Domingo, now Hispaniola, in the West Indies.

Peter Wilton · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- American golden ploverPBDB
- Sits inside
- PluvialisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 26 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Pluvialis dominica 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
13 occurrences- Pleistocene23%
- Holocene77%
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.
Pluvialis dominica and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Pluvialis dominica and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
411 taxa- Gallus gallus9 sites
- Anous stolidus8 sites
- Anous minutus7 sites
- Phaethon lepturus6 sites
- Sula sula6 sites
- Sterninae5 sites
- Fregata ariel4 sites
- Fregata minor4 sites
- Onychoprion fuscatus4 sites
- Porphyrio porphyrio4 sites
- Sula4 sites
- Tyto alba4 sites
- Anous ceruleus3 sites
- Ardenna pacifica3 sites
- Arenaria interpres3 sites
- Ducula pacifica3 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis3 sites
- Gygis alba candida3 sites
- Numenius phaeopus3 sites
- Numenius tahitiensis3 sites
- Pterodroma3 sites
- Tringa incana3 sites
- Tringa solitaria3 sites
- Actitis macularius2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Pluvialis dominica, 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
9 references- Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Tikopia and Anuta, Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands4
- Biogeography and prehistoric exploitation of birds from Fais Island, Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia2
- Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, south Pacific1
- Extinction and biogeography of birds on Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia1
- Prehistoric extinction of birds on Mangaia, Cook Islands, Polynesia1
- Fossil birds from late Quaternary deposits in New Caledonia1
- The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- The late Pleistocene avifauna of La Carolina, southwestern Ecuador1
Each of the 13 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 Pluvialis dominica
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Peter Wilton
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pluvialis dominica 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 itPluvialis through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Mueller 1776)