Lullula arborea
The woodlark or wood lark is the only extant species in the lark genus Lullula. It is found across most of Europe, the Middle East, western Asia and the mountains of north Africa. It is mainly resident (non-migratory) in the west of its range, but eastern populations of this passerine bird are more migratory, moving further south in winter.

Ján Svetlík · 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
- wood larkPBDB
- Sits inside
- LullulaPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, granivorePBDB, for Alaudidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Alaudidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Alaudidae
Time the record covers
At most 1.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 1.8 Mya and 129 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Lullula arborea on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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.
Lullula arborea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lullula arborea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
137 taxa- Calandrella brachydactyla2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Corvidae2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Lacerta2 sites
- Prunella modularis2 sites
- Scolopax rusticola2 sites
- Sturnus2 sites
- Accipiter gentilis1 site
- Accipiter nisus1 site
- Aegolius martae1 site
- Alauda arvensis1 site
- Allocricetus1 site
- Allophaiomys1 site
- Alytes obstetricans1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anas crecca1 site
- Anguis fragilis1 site
- Anser erythropus1 site
- Anthus1 site
- Anthus pratensis1 site
- Apodemus1 site
- Apus1 site
- Apus melba1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Lullula arborea, 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- 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 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 Lullula arborea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ján Svetlík
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lullula arborea was found in Sketchfab.
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, “Woodlark”
- 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 itLullula through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)