Spatula querquedula
The garganey is a small dabbling duck. It breeds in much of Europe and across the Palearctic, but is strictly migratory, with the entire population moving to Africa, India, Bangladesh and Australasia during the winter of the Northern hemisphere, where large flocks can occur. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Like other small ducks such as the Eurasian teal, this species rises easily from the water with a fast twisting wader-like flight.

YedidyaPopper · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- garganeyPBDB
- Sits inside
- SpatulaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Anseriformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Anseriformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
10 occurrences of Spatula querquedula 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
10 occurrences- Pleistocene90%
- Holocene10%
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.
Spatula querquedula and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Spatula querquedula and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
210 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Anas crecca4 sites
- Corvus monedula4 sites
- Mareca penelope4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Rallus aquaticus4 sites
- Turdus4 sites
- Anas acuta3 sites
- Aythya fuligula3 sites
- Castor fiber3 sites
- Cervus elaphus3 sites
- Coturnix coturnix3 sites
- Dama3 sites
- Lyrurus tetrix3 sites
- Palaeoloxodon antiquus3 sites
- Perdix perdix3 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus3 sites
- Spatula clypeata3 sites
- Accipiter gentilis2 sites
- Accipiter nisus2 sites
- Aegolius funereus2 sites
- Allactaga2 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Apus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Spatula querquedula, 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- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece2
- Pleistocene vertebrates from the Kyparíssia lignite mine, Megalopolis Basin, S. Greece: Testudines, Aves, Suiformes1
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- The ornithological remains from Marathousa 1 (Middle Pleistocene; Megalopolis Basin, Greece)1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
- The birds of the late Quaternary of the Altai Mts1
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary1
- Giacimento del Paleolitico inferiore a Malagrotta (Roma)1
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 Spatula querquedula
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- YedidyaPopper
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Spatula querquedula 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Garganey”
- 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 itSpatula through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)