Oenanthe oenanthe
The northern wheatear or wheatear is a small passerine bird in the Old World flycatcher family. It is the most widespread member of the wheatear genus Oenanthe in Europe and North and Central Asia. The northern wheatear is a migratory insectivorous species breeding in open stony country in Europe and east across the Palearctic with footholds in northeastern Canada and Greenland as well as in northwestern Canada and Alaska. It nests in rock crevices and rabbit burrows. All birds spend most of their winter in Africa.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- northern wheatearPBDB
- Sits inside
- OenanthePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Muscicapidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Muscicapidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Muscicapidae
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Oenanthe oenanthe 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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.
Oenanthe oenanthe and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Oenanthe oenanthe and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
122 taxa- Alauda arvensis4 sites
- Erithacus rubecula3 sites
- Sturnus vulgaris3 sites
- Anthus pratensis2 sites
- Anthus trivialis2 sites
- Corvus monedula2 sites
- Eremophila alpestris2 sites
- Galerida cristata2 sites
- Hirundo rustica2 sites
- Jynx torquilla2 sites
- Luscinia megarhynchos2 sites
- Motacilla alba2 sites
- Phoenicurus ochruros2 sites
- Plectrophenax nivalis2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus2 sites
- Sturnus2 sites
- Sylvia2 sites
- Turdus merula2 sites
- Turdus philomelos2 sites
- Turdus viscivorus2 sites
- Tyto alba2 sites
- Acrocephalus arundinaceus1 site
- Alca torda1 site
- Alectoris rufa1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Oenanthe oenanthe, 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- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
- Avian remains from new Upper Pleistocene and Holocene sites in the Spanish Pyrenees1
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)1
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover1
- Pleistocene and prehistoric birds of south-west Britain1
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 content2
Picture of Oenanthe oenanthe
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
MorphoSource 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 itOenanthe through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)