Melanocorypha
Melanocorypha is a small genus of birds in the lark family. The current genus name, Melanocorypha is from Ancient Greek melas, "black", and koruphos a term used by ancient writer for a now unknown bird, but here confused with korudos, "lark".
Dûrzan cîrano · 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- Sits inside
- AlaudidaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, granivorePBDB, for Alaudidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Alaudidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Alaudidae
Time the record covers
At least 4.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 7.246 Mya to 129 ka.
6 occurrences of Melanocorypha 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
6 occurrences- Miocene17%
- Pleistocene83%
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.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Melanocorypha has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Melanocorypha and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Melanocorypha and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
155 taxa- Alauda arvensis4 sites
- Columba livia3 sites
- Galerida3 sites
- Perdix palaeoperdix3 sites
- Scolopax rusticola3 sites
- Turdus merula3 sites
- Alectoris2 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Anser albifrons2 sites
- Athene noctua2 sites
- Calandrella2 sites
- Calidris pugnax2 sites
- Corvus pliocaenus2 sites
- Falco peregrinus2 sites
- Garrulus glandarius2 sites
- Grus grus2 sites
- Oryctolagus2 sites
- Palaeocryptonyx donnezani2 sites
- Passeriformes2 sites
- Pica pica2 sites
- Pluvialis apricaria2 sites
- Pterocles orientalis2 sites
- Tadorna ferruginea2 sites
- Tetrax tetrax2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Melanocorypha, 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
5 references- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)2
- The fossil bird associations from the early Middle Pleistocene of the Ragusa province (SE Sicily, Italy)1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview1
- A Lower Miocene gull (Larinae gen. indet.) (Laridae Vigors, 1825 - Charadriiformes Huxley, 1867) from Hrabarsko (W Bulgaria)1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
Each of the 6 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 Melanocorypha
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dûrzan cîrano
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Melanocorypha 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 itAlaudidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Boie 1828