Melospiza lincolnii
Lincoln's sparrow is a small sparrow native to North America. It is a less common passerine bird that often stays hidden under thick ground cover, but can be distinguished by its sweet, wrenlike song. Lincoln's sparrow is one of three species in the genus Melospiza which also includes the song sparrow and the swamp sparrow. It lives in well-covered brushy habitats, often near water. This bird is poorly documented because of its secretive nature and breeding habits solely in boreal regions.

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
- Lincoln's sparrowPBDB
- Sits inside
- MelospizaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 18.8 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 1.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 1.4 Mya and 14 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Melospiza lincolnii 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.
Melospiza lincolnii and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Melospiza lincolnii and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
55 taxa- Agelaius phoeniceus1 site
- Aimophila ruficeps1 site
- Amphispiza bilineata1 site
- Anas1 site
- Anas crecca1 site
- Anser1 site
- Aquila chrysaetos1 site
- Artemisiospiza belli1 site
- Asio1 site
- Aythya americana1 site
- Bubo scandiacus1 site
- Bubo virginianus1 site
- Bufo nestor1 site
- Buteo1 site
- Calcarius1 site
- Calcarius lapponicus1 site
- Calcarius ornatus1 site
- Canis latrans1 site
- Centrocercus urophasianus1 site
- Chondestes grammacus1 site
- Colaptes auratus1 site
- Corvus brachyrhynchos1 site
- Corvus corax1 site
- Crotalus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Melospiza lincolnii, 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 early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
- Fossil fringillids from Rancho la Brea1
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 Melospiza lincolnii
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rhododendrites
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Melospiza lincolnii 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 itMelospiza through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Audubon 1834)