#anseriform

By Ripley Cook

Etymology: Goose Diver

First Described By: Miller, 1925

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Galloanserae, Anseriformes, Anseres, Anatoidea, Anatidae, Anatinae

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: Between 126,000 and 250 BCE, from the Tarantian of the Pleistocene through the Holocene 

Chendytes is known from a variety of locations along the west coast of North America - the Palos Verdes Sand Formation, the San Pedro Sand Formation, the San Miguel Island deposits, the Daisy Cave deposits, and the Port Orford Formation, among others. 

Physical Description: Chendytes was a fascinating and odd duck, about the size of living swans - so approximately 1.5 meters long in terms of its body size. They were shaped almost identically to the Hesperornithines of old - with streamlined bodies for diving and short legs for propelling their swimming, they also had small wings that were essentially useless for any activity. As such, like the dead Hesperornithines and the living grebes, it was extremely well adapted for diving, which is precisely what they spent their lives doing. Chendytes had a long neck, like modern geese, and a fairly stout body - also like living geese. It differed from living geese in having stronger legs for diving, and almost no wings at all.

Diet: Chendytes would have mainly eaten fish and other aquatic organisms as it dived through the sea. 

By Apokryltaros, CC BY 2.5

Behavior: Chendytes probably spent most of its time diving and swimming through the water, in search of sources of food. It would have rarely gone on land, being ill-suited to walking, but instead done most of its business in the ocean. It would have propelled itself fast in pursuit of prey, as well as to escape predators such as sharks, whales, and even large ray-finned fish. It probably migrated to nest - with large concentrations of eggs known from the Channel Islands of California, it even seems probable that these ducks would have migrated all the way there to breed, like many other aquatic birds do today. They probably lived in very large flocks, diving and swimming about together like living penguins. 

Ecosystem: The coast of North America was very similar in the past to today, but with more dramatic climate movements given the fluctuations of the Ice Age, and a different cast of living creature characters. There were giant, Sabretooth Salmon; robust and terrifying carnivorous mammals like Sabretooth Cats and Dire Coyotes; mammoths and mastodons; and a variety of interesting dinosaurs such as giant Condors, tiny Dow’s Puffins, and the bulky Californian Turkey. In short, the coast of California during the time of Chendytes would have resembled today, while still being very odd and foreign - filled with a variety of megafauna, both dinosaur and not. 

By Scott Reid

Other: Interestingly enough, even though Chendytes was adapted so thoroughly for diving, it is more closely related to the dabbling ducks than to the diving ducks - indicating it was a strange evolutionary offshoot of the dabbling duck group, adapting to the rapidly changing conditions of the late Quaternary Ice Age. It probably went extinct due to a mixture of habitat loss and human hunting, as people became more common along the coast - there is an extensive record of it being hunted and exploited by humans for at least 8,000 years, one of the longest such records known. .

~ By Meig Dickson

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