Calamospiza melanocorys
The lark bunting is a medium-sized American bunting native to central and western North America. It was designated the state bird of Colorado in 1931.

Nick Varvel · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- lark buntingPBDB
- Sits inside
- CalamospizaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 118 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Calamospiza melanocorys 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
2 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.
Calamospiza melanocorys and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Calamospiza melanocorys and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
155 taxa- Agelaius phoeniceus2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis2 sites
- Buteo lagopus2 sites
- Calidris melanotos2 sites
- Charadrius vociferus2 sites
- Colaptes auratus2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Eremophila alpestris2 sites
- Euphagus cyanocephalus2 sites
- Falco sparverius2 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus2 sites
- Salpinctes obsoletus2 sites
- Sturnella neglecta2 sites
- Turdus migratorius2 sites
- Zenaida macroura2 sites
- Accipiter gentilis1 site
- Accipiter striatus1 site
- Aegolius acadicus1 site
- Aegolius funereus1 site
- Alces alces1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anas acuta1 site
- Anas crecca1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Calamospiza melanocorys, 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
2 references- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
Each of the 2 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 Calamospiza melanocorys
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nick Varvel
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itCalamospiza through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stejneger 1885