Sula sula
The red-footed booby is a large seabird of the booby family, Sulidae. Adults always have red feet, but the colour of the plumage varies. They are powerful and agile fliers, harnessing the wind to fly efficiently, but they are clumsy in takeoffs and landings. They forage by catching flying fish from above the ocean's surface and by performing shallow dives. They are found widely in the tropics, and breed colonially in coastal regions, especially isolated islands such as St. Brandon, Mauritius, and the Chagos Archipelago. Although its population is declining, it is considered to be a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It faces threats from climate change, competition with fisheries, human disturbance, and invasive species.
Gregg Yan · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- red-footed boobyPBDB
- Sits inside
- SulaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 1.07 kgWikidata
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.
35 occurrences of Sula sula 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
35 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.
Sula sula and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Sula sula and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
131 taxa- Anous stolidus19 sites
- Gallus gallus14 sites
- Onychoprion fuscatus11 sites
- Fregata minor10 sites
- Sterninae10 sites
- Anous minutus9 sites
- Phaethon lepturus9 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri9 sites
- Gygis alba8 sites
- Sula leucogaster8 sites
- Fregata ariel7 sites
- Pterodroma7 sites
- Pelecanus occidentalis6 sites
- Pluvialis dominica6 sites
- Porphyrio porphyrio6 sites
- Procellariidae6 sites
- Pseudobulweria rostrata6 sites
- Ardenna pacifica5 sites
- Fregata5 sites
- Sula dactylatra5 sites
- Numenius tahitiensis4 sites
- Phoenicopterus ruber4 sites
- Puffinus nativitatis4 sites
- Anous3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Sula sula, 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
15 references- Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Tikopia and Anuta, Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands14
- Avian remains from late pre-colonial Amerindian sites on islands of the Venezuelan Caribbean5
- The fossil birds of Henderson Island, Pitcairn Group: natural turnover and human impact, a synopsis2
- Additional notes on subfossil bird remains from Ascension Island2
- Paleornithology of St. Helena Island, South Atlantic Ocean2
- Bird bones from the To’aga site: prehistoric loss of seabirds and megapodes1
- Biogeography and prehistoric exploitation of birds from Fais Island, Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia1
- Extinction and biogeography of birds on Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia1
- Extinct and extirpated birds from Aitutaki and Atiu, southern Cook Islands1
- Extinction of birds in eastern Polynesia: A review of the record, and comparison with other Pacific island groups1
- On subfossil bones of Abbott’s Booby Sula abbotti from the Mascarene Islands, with a note on the proportions and distribution of the Sulidae1
- Subfossil bird remains on Ascension Island1
Each of the 35 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. 3 further references are not listed. 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 content2
Picture of Sula sula
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Gregg Yan
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Sula sula · FMNH:Birds:339374
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 itSula through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1766)