Upupa antaios

The Saint Helena hoopoe, also known as the Saint Helena giant hoopoe or giant hoopoe, is an extinct species of hoopoe known exclusively from an incomplete subfossil skeleton. Once endemic to the island of Saint Helena, it was last seen around 1550, likely driven to extinction by various aspects of human activity.

Upupa antaios

Apokryltaros at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5 · 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
Saint Helena hoopoePBDB
Sits inside
UpupaPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Upupidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Upupidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Upupidae

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.

Pleistocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesHolocene — about 2 of 2 occurrences17 ka–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences512 ka0 Mya

2 occurrences of Upupa antaios on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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

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.

Upupa antaios and its relatives

Holocene

Where Upupa antaios and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

11 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Upupa antaios, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

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 Upupa antaios

Credit
Apokryltaros at English Wikipedia
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Upupa antaios 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 itUpupa through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Olson 1975