Species profile
Procellaria altirostris
Procellaria altirostris
Quick answer
Holotype: NMNZ S. 46691; partial skeleton embedded, but largely exposed, in a concretion. Elements preserved: partial cranium (crushed) with premaxilla, furcula, both coracoids, right scapula, right humerus, both ulnae, right radius, synsacrum, left femur, both tibiotarsi, both tarsometatarsi but the left is missing both ends, one pedal phalange, and other fragments. The fossil is from a fully grown individual based on bone ossification (Fig. 2). Type Locality, Type Horizon and Age: Ohawe Beach, south Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand (New Zealand Fossil Record Electronic Database Number Q 21 / F 0175, Fig. 3). The fossil was found inside a marine mudstone concretion loose on the beach in 2015, and prepared by John Buchanan-Brown in the same year. The concretion is presumed to have eroded from an adjacent cliff in the Tangahoe Formation. This Formation is 3.0 - 3.4 Ma (local Waipipian stage, late Pliocene, Piacenzian; McKee, 1994; Naish et al., 2005; Thomas et al., 2020). Such concretions are thought to have formed on the ocean floor at a depth of up to 50 m or more (Tennyson & Mannering, 2018).
- Scientific name
- Procellaria altirostris
- Family
- Procellariidae
- Order
- Procellariiformes
- Genus
- Procellaria
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Related species in Procellariidae
- Antarctic fulmar, Southern fulmar, Silver-grey petrel (Fulmarus glacialoides)
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- Ardenna davealleni (Ardenna davealleni)
- Argyrodyptes microtarsus (Argyrodyptes microtarsus)
- Atlantic Petrel (Pterodroma incerta)
- Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus)
- Bannerman's Shearwater (Puffinus bannermani)