Somateria spectabilis

The king eider is a large sea duck that breeds along Northern Hemisphere Arctic coasts of northeast Europe, North America and Asia. The birds spend most of the year in coastal marine ecosystems at high latitudes, and migrate to Arctic tundra to breed in June and July. They lay four to seven eggs in a scrape on the ground lined with grass and down.

Somateria spectabilis

Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom · 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
king eiderPBDB
Sits inside
SomateriaPBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Anatinae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Anatinae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
freshwaterPBDB, for Anatinae
Mass
1.62 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 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 3 of 10 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 7 of 10 occurrences1.8–1.8 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.8–1.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.7–1.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.4–1.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.3–1.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–1.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.1–997 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences997 ka–920 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences920 ka–843 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences843 ka–767 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences153 ka–77 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences77 ka–0 Mya — about 8 occurrences774 ka11.7 ka2.3 Mya0 Mya

10 occurrences of Somateria spectabilis on record. 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

10 occurrences

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

1 formation

Bermont — 27.70°N, 82.50°W

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The named rock units Somateria spectabilis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

230 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Somateria spectabilis, 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

7 references

Each of the 10 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 Somateria spectabilis

Credit
Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Somateria spectabilis 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 itSomateria through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)