Pterodroma alba
The Phoenix petrel is a medium-sized tropical seabird, measuring up to 35 cm (1.15 ft) long, with a wingspan of 83 cm (2.72 ft). It has a dark brown upperparts plumage, white below and whitish throat. The sexes are similar.

James Eaton · CC0 · 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
- phoenix petrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- PterodromaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Procellariiformes
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Pterodroma alba 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
2 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.
Pterodroma alba and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Pterodroma alba and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
48 taxa- Alopecoenas erythropterus2 sites
- Anous stolidus2 sites
- Ardenna pacifica2 sites
- Butorides striata2 sites
- Ducula galeata2 sites
- Egretta sacra2 sites
- Fregata ariel2 sites
- Fregata minor2 sites
- Gygis alba2 sites
- Phaethon lepturus2 sites
- Pseudobulweria rostrata2 sites
- Ptilinopus purpuratus2 sites
- Puffinus nativitatis2 sites
- Sula leucogaster2 sites
- Sula sula2 sites
- Todiramphus tutus2 sites
- Vini sinotoi2 sites
- Vini vidivici2 sites
- Zapornia tabuensis2 sites
- Acrocephalus caffer1 site
- Anous minutus1 site
- Aplonis1 site
- Aplonis diluvialis1 site
- Columbidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Pterodroma alba, 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
2 references- Extinction and biogeography of birds on Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia1
- Extinction of birds in eastern Polynesia: A review of the record, and comparison with other Pacific island groups1
Each of the 2 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 Pterodroma alba
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James Eaton
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pterodroma alba 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 itPterodroma through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)