Aphelocoma
Aphelocoma is a genus of passerine birds in the family Corvidae that includes the scrub jays and their relatives. They are New World jays found in Mexico, western Central America and the western United States, with an outlying population in Florida. This genus belongs to the group of New World jays which is not closely related to other jays, magpies or treepies. Within this group, according to a 2023 molecular analysis, Aphelocoma is the sister group to a clade consisting of Cyanocitta and Gymnorhinus. They live in open pine-oak forests, chaparral, and mixed evergreen forests.
GreyStork ( talk ) 11:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- scrub jayPBDB
- Sits inside
- CorvidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Corvidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Corvidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Corvidae
Time the record covers
At least 1.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.
13 occurrences of Aphelocoma 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
13 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Aphelocoma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Aphelocoma and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Aphelocoma and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
473 taxa- Accipiter cooperii8 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps8 sites
- Zenaida macroura8 sites
- Falco sparverius7 sites
- Athene cunicularia6 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis6 sites
- Callipepla californica6 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis6 sites
- Corvus corax6 sites
- Fulica americana6 sites
- Geococcyx californianus6 sites
- Megascops asio6 sites
- Tyto alba6 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos5 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos5 sites
- Bubo virginianus5 sites
- Buteo5 sites
- Charadrius vociferus5 sites
- Falco peregrinus5 sites
- Numenius americanus5 sites
- Spatula clypeata5 sites
- Sturnella neglecta5 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus4 sites
- Aythya affinis4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Aphelocoma, 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
10 references- The fossil Birds of California3
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits2
- New Record of Capybara (Rodentia: Caviidae: Hydrochoerinae) from the Pleistocene of San Diego County, California with Remarks on Their Biogeography and Dispersal in the Pleistocene of Western North America1
- Avian material from Rancho del Oro, a Pleistocene locality in San Diego County, California1
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula1
- Reconstruction of mid Wisconsinan environments in southern New Mexico1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida1
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California1
- The Pleistocene avifauna of Arredondo, Florida1
- Additions to the Rancho La Brea Avifauna1
Each of the 13 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 content2
Picture of Aphelocoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- GreyStork ( talk ) 11:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Aphelocoma”
- 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 itCorvidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cabanis 1851