Thalasseus maximus

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- royal ternPBDB
- Sits inside
- ThalasseusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
3 occurrences of Thalasseus maximus 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
3 occurrencesThese 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
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
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The named rock units Thalasseus maximus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
466 taxa- Buteo jamaicensis2 sites
- Corvus leucognaphalus2 sites
- Ionornis martinica2 sites
- Mareca americana2 sites
- Nesotrochis debooyi2 sites
- Patagioenas squamosa2 sites
- Pelecanus occidentalis2 sites
- Phoenicopterus ruber2 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri2 sites
- Zenaida aurita zenaida2 sites
- <Brotulid>1 site
- Acanthocybium solandri1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Acipenser oxyrhynchus1 site
- Actinocythereis1 site
- Actinocythereis captionis1 site
- Acuticythereis1 site
- Aethiinae1 site
- Aetobatus1 site
- Agonidae1 site
- Alca1 site
- Alca ausonia1 site
- Alca carolinensis1 site
- Alca minor1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Thalasseus maximus, 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
3 references- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina1
- Bird remains from the West Indies1
- Ancient records of birds from the island of St. Croix with observations on extinct and living birds of Puerto Rico1
Each of the 3 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 content2

Picture of Thalasseus maximus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Thalasseus maximus maximus · FMNH:Birds:379033
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itThalasseus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Boddaert 1783)