Anthus pratensis
The meadow pipit is a small passerine bird that breeds throughout much of the Palearctic, from south-eastern Greenland and Iceland east to just east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, and south to central France and Romania; an isolated population also occurs in the Caucasus Mountains. It is migratory over most of its range, wintering in southern Europe, North Africa, and south-western Asia, but is resident year-round in western Europe, although even here many birds move to the coast or lowlands in winter.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 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
- meadow pipitPBDB
- Sits inside
- AnthusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 2.06 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Anthus pratensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
5 occurrences- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene20%
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.
Anthus pratensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Anthus pratensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
174 taxa- Bufo bufo3 sites
- Alauda arvensis2 sites
- Alle alle2 sites
- Anguis fragilis2 sites
- Apodemus2 sites
- Bufo calamita2 sites
- Cervidae2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Emberiza citrinella2 sites
- Equus2 sites
- Eremophila alpestris2 sites
- Erithacus rubecula2 sites
- Galerida cristata2 sites
- Hystrix2 sites
- Lacertidae2 sites
- Myotis2 sites
- Neomys2 sites
- Oenanthe oenanthe2 sites
- Oryctolagus2 sites
- Phoenicurus ochruros2 sites
- Rhinechis scalaris2 sites
- Saxicola torquatus2 sites
- Sturnus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Anthus pratensis, 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
5 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- Une faune tres diversifee du Pleistocene inferieur de la Sierra de Quibas (province de Murcia, Espagne)1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)1
- Sedimentology and stratigraphy in the cave Hamnsundhelleren, western Norway1
Each of the 5 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Anthus pratensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anthus pratensis 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 itAnthus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)