Melanerpes lewis
Lewis's woodpecker is a large North American species of woodpecker which ornithologist Alexander Wilson named after Meriwether Lewis. Lewis was one of the explorers who surveyed the areas bought by the United States of America as part of the Louisiana Purchase and first described this species of bird.

Uncredited · 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
- Lewis's woodpeckerPBDB
- Sits inside
- MelanerpesPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Picidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Picidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Picidae
- Mass
- 5.6 gWikidata
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.
3 occurrences of Melanerpes lewis 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
3 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.
Melanerpes lewis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Melanerpes lewis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
151 taxa- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Charadrius vociferus3 sites
- Limnodromus griseus3 sites
- Megascops asio3 sites
- Meleagris californica3 sites
- Numenius americanus3 sites
- Pica nuttalli3 sites
- Zenaida macroura3 sites
- Aegolius acadicus2 sites
- Antigone canadensis2 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos2 sites
- Ardea herodias2 sites
- Astur atricapillus2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Branta canadensis2 sites
- Branta minuscula2 sites
- Breagyps clarki2 sites
- Bubo virginianus2 sites
- Buteo2 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis2 sites
- Buteo regalis2 sites
- Buteo swainsoni2 sites
- Buteogallus fragilis2 sites
- Callipepla californica2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Melanerpes lewis, 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- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California1
- The fossil Birds of California1
- Additions to the Rancho La Brea Avifauna1
Each of the 3 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 Melanerpes lewis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Melanerpes lewis 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 itMelanerpes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1849)