Haemorhous mexicanus
The house finch is a North American bird in the finch family. It is native to Mexico and southwestern United States, but has since been introduced to the eastern part of North America and Hawaiʻi, and is found year-round in almost all parts of the United States and most of Mexico, with breeding grounds well into Canada as far north as northern Alberta. There are estimated to be 40 million house finches across North America, making it the second-most populous finch, just behind the American goldfinch. The house finch and the other two American rosefinches are placed in the genus Haemorhous.

Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- house finchPBDB
- Sits inside
- HaemorhousPBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Fringillidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Fringillidae
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya 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 Haemorhous mexicanus 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.
Haemorhous mexicanus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Haemorhous mexicanus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
177 taxa- Athene cunicularia4 sites
- Eremophila alpestris4 sites
- Falco sparverius4 sites
- Oreoscoptes montanus4 sites
- Sturnella neglecta4 sites
- Aves3 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis3 sites
- Catharus guttatus3 sites
- Catharus ustulatus3 sites
- Cerorhinca monocerata3 sites
- Chondestes grammacus3 sites
- Corvus corax3 sites
- Icterus bullockii3 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus3 sites
- Larus heermanni3 sites
- Larus occidentalis3 sites
- Melospiza melodia3 sites
- Oreothlypis celata3 sites
- Passerculus sandwichensis3 sites
- Passerella iliaca3 sites
- Pheucticus melanocephalus3 sites
- Pipilo maculatus3 sites
- Piranga ludoviciana3 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Haemorhous mexicanus, 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 Deposits3
- The fossil Birds 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 content1
Picture of Haemorhous mexicanus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rhododendrites
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Haemorhous mexicanus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “House finch”
- 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 itHaemorhous through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Müller 1776)