Fringilla
The genus Fringilla, also known as chaffinches, is a small group of eight species of finches from the Old World. It is the only genus in the subfamily Fringillinae.

MichaelMaggs – Edited (sharpened, down-sampled, contrast corrected, noise removed) by: Arad · 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
- finchPBDB
- Sits inside
- FringillidaePBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Fringillidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Fringillidae
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.
19 occurrences of Fringilla 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
19 occurrences- Pleistocene74%
- Holocene26%
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.
Fringilla and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Fringilla and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
335 taxa- Turdus11 sites
- Erithacus rubecula10 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus10 sites
- Corvus monedula9 sites
- Chloris chloris8 sites
- Coccothraustes coccothraustes8 sites
- Scolopax rusticola8 sites
- Columba livia7 sites
- Sturnus7 sites
- Buteo buteo6 sites
- Columba6 sites
- Columba palumbus6 sites
- Corvus6 sites
- Falco eleonorae6 sites
- Falco tinnunculus6 sites
- Turdus iliacus6 sites
- Tyto alba6 sites
- Accipiter gentilis5 sites
- Athene cretensis5 sites
- Emberiza5 sites
- Garrulus glandarius5 sites
- Turdus merula5 sites
- Alauda arvensis4 sites
- Apus melba4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Fringilla, 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 Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece5
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)3
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover3
- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand2
- Avian fossil assemblages at the onset of the LGM in the eastern Alps: A palaecological contribution from the Rio Secco Cave (Italy)1
- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
Each of the 19 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 Fringilla
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- MichaelMaggs – Edited (sharpened, down-sampled, contrast corrected, noise removed) by: Arad
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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, “Fringilla”
- 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 itFringillidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758