Melozone fusca
The canyon towhee is a bird of the family Passerellidae. Until 1989, the canyon towhee and the California towhee were considered to be a single species which was called the brown towhee.

Polinova · 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
- canyon towheePBDB
- Sits inside
- MelozonePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
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.
2 occurrences of Melozone fusca 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
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.
Melozone fusca and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Melozone fusca and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
91 taxa- Passerella iliaca2 sites
- Pipilo maculatus2 sites
- Accipiter cooperii1 site
- Accipiter striatus velox1 site
- Amphispiza bilineata1 site
- Anas platyrhynchos1 site
- Anser1 site
- Antigone canadensis1 site
- Aphelocoma californica1 site
- Apsena laticornis1 site
- Apsena pubescens1 site
- Aquila chrysaetos1 site
- Asio otus wilsonianus1 site
- Astur atricapillus1 site
- Bassariscus astutus1 site
- Bombycilla cedrorum1 site
- Bubo virginianus1 site
- Buteo1 site
- Buteo jamaicensis1 site
- Buteo lineatus1 site
- Buteogallus (Wetmoregyps) daggetti1 site
- Buteogallus fragilis1 site
- Callipepla californica1 site
- Canthon simplex antiquus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Melozone fusca, 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 referencesEach 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 Melozone fusca
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Polinova
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Melozone fusca was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itMelozone through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Swainson 1827)