How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
Fossil range16–0 Ma Miocene → Holocene
StatusStill living record runs to the present
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Vanellus.
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Coordinate accuracy83% within 1 km
≤100 m 30≤1 km 38≤10 km 14
82 georeferenced · 48 without coordinates
Open the mapobservation + sensor130
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Coordinate accuracy6% within 1 km
≤1 km 1≤10 km 15>10 km 1
17 georeferenced · 38 without coordinates
Open the institutions mapphysical evidence55
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
10Collections & institutions
Holding institutions3 of 8 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
Institution
Specimens
Australian National Wildlife Collectionlocation not on record
23
DOI/NPS, Salem Maritime National Historic Sitelocation not on record
5
Cambridge, US
3
Western Australian Museumlocation not on record
2
University of Nebraska State Museumlocation not on record
1
Sydney, AU
1
Honolulu, US
1
Natural History Museum, Londonlocation not on record
1
8 institutions · 37 of 55 vouchered records shown · 2 without an institution code
