Lyrurus tetrix
The black grouse, also known as northern black grouse, Eurasian black grouse, blackgame or blackcock, is a large bird in the grouse tribe. It is a sedentary species, spanning across the Palearctic in moorland and steppe habitat when breeding, often near wooded areas. They will spend the winter perched in dense forests, feeding almost exclusively on the needles of conifers. The black grouse is one of two species of grouse in the genus Lyrurus, the other being the lesser-known Caucasian grouse.

Aconcagua ( talk ) · 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
- black grousePBDB
- Sits inside
- LyrurusPBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Phasianidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Phasianidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Phasianidae
- Mass
- 925 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
22 occurrences of Lyrurus tetrix 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
22 occurrences- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene79%
- Holocene18%
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.
Lyrurus tetrix and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lyrurus tetrix and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
251 taxa- Passeriformes10 sites
- Perdix perdix9 sites
- Tetrao urogallus9 sites
- Galliformes8 sites
- Lagopus lagopus8 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus8 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos7 sites
- Anatidae7 sites
- Corvus monedula7 sites
- Corvidae6 sites
- Coturnix coturnix6 sites
- Anas crecca5 sites
- Asio flammeus5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Hirundo rustica5 sites
- Lagopus muta5 sites
- Phasianidae5 sites
- Pyrrhocorax5 sites
- Turdus5 sites
- Crex crex4 sites
- Falco4 sites
- Gallinago gallinago4 sites
- Mareca penelope4 sites
- Pica pica4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Lyrurus tetrix, 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
12 references- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate6
- Birds in Finnish prehistory4
- Avian fossil assemblages at the onset of the LGM in the eastern Alps: A palaecological contribution from the Rio Secco Cave (Italy)2
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
- 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 birds of the late Quaternary of the Altai Mts1
- Pleistocene and prehistoric birds of south-west Britain1
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary1
- Ust'-Kanskaya peshchernaya paleoliticheskaya stoyanka1
- Le Loess a bancs durcis de Saint-Vallier (Drome) et sa faune de Mammiferes Villafranchiens1
- La grotte de l'Observatoire à Monaco1
Each of the 22 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 Lyrurus tetrix
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Aconcagua ( talk )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lyrurus tetrix 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
- 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 itLyrurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)