Dryocopus pileatus

The pileated woodpecker is a large, crow-sized woodpecker with a prominent red crest, white neck stripe, and a mostly black body. This woodpecker is native to North America, where it is the largest confirmed extant woodpecker species and the third-largest extant species of woodpecker in the world, after the great slaty woodpecker and the black woodpecker. It inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the Pacific Coast. This woodpecker is primarily an insectivore, eating insects that live in trees; it is famous for making large, nearly rectangular carvings into trees, which are used to extract prey inside the tree or to make a nest. The species has a large range and an increasing population, causing it to be categorized as a species of "least concern" by the IUCN.

Dryocopus pileatus

Joshlaymon · 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
pileated woodpeckerPBDB
Sits inside
DryocopusPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Picidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Picidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Picidae
Mass
11 gWikidata

Time the record covers

At least 2 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 14 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 210 ka to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 3 of 5 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 2 of 5 occurrences213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences14 ka – 11.7 ka710 ka0 Mya

5 occurrences of Dryocopus pileatus 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

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.

Dryocopus pileatus and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Dryocopus pileatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

296 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Dryocopus pileatus, 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

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 Dryocopus pileatus

Credit
Joshlaymon
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Dryocopus pileatus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itDryocopus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)