Oreoscoptes montanus
The sage thrasher is a medium-sized passerine bird in the family Mimidae. It is the only species in the genus Oreoscoptes and the smallest of the thrashers. It is found in the regions of western North America, breeding from the Great Basin to southern British Columbia, and migrates south to southern United States and northern Mexico for winter. Sage thrashers are commonly found in shrubsteppe habitat and are strongly associated with sagebrush for which it relies on for nesting.

Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- sage thrasherPBDB
- Sits inside
- OreoscoptesPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Mimidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Mimidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mimidae
- Mass
- 44 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Oreoscoptes montanus 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- 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.
Oreoscoptes montanus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Oreoscoptes montanus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
248 taxa- Athene cunicularia6 sites
- Falco sparverius6 sites
- Sturnella neglecta6 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Eremophila alpestris5 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus5 sites
- Zenaida macroura5 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Charadrius vociferus4 sites
- Haemorhous mexicanus4 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps4 sites
- Rissa tridactyla4 sites
- Turdus migratorius4 sites
- Tyto alba4 sites
- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Anser caerulescens3 sites
- Antigone canadensis3 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos3 sites
- Ardea herodias3 sites
- Asio flammeus3 sites
- Aves3 sites
- Branta minuscula3 sites
- Buteo3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Oreoscoptes montanus, 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- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits3
- The fossil Birds of California2
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California1
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 Oreoscoptes montanus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Oreoscoptes montanus 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 itOreoscoptes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Townsend 1837)