Glaucidium gnoma
The mountain pygmy owl, or northern pygmy owl, is a small species of owl from the family Strigidae. They reside throughout southern Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.

dominic sherony · CC BY-SA 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
- northern pygmy-owlPBDB
- Sits inside
- GlaucidiumPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, insectivorePBDB, for Strigidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Strigidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Strigiformes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Strigidae
Time the record covers
At most 199 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Glaucidium gnoma 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
4 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.
Glaucidium gnoma and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Glaucidium gnoma and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
172 taxa- Bubo virginianus4 sites
- Cathartes aura4 sites
- Colaptes auratus cafer4 sites
- Cyanocitta stelleri4 sites
- Falco sparverius4 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus4 sites
- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Accipiter striatus velox3 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos3 sites
- Asio otus wilsonianus3 sites
- Buteo3 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis3 sites
- Buteo swainsoni3 sites
- Buteogallus fragilis3 sites
- Callipepla californica3 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis3 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos3 sites
- Corvus corax3 sites
- Geococcyx californianus3 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus3 sites
- Megascops asio3 sites
- Meleagris californica3 sites
- Patagioenas fasciata3 sites
- Sturnella neglecta3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Glaucidium gnoma, 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
3 references- The fossil Birds of California2
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California1
- Avifauna of the Pleistocene cave deposits of California1
Each of the 4 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 Glaucidium gnoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- dominic sherony
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Glaucidium gnoma · AMNH:Birds:FLUID-7407
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 itGlaucidium through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wagler 1832