Passerellidae
New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae. They are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns.

Wolfgang Wander · 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- Also called
- new world sparrowPBDB
- Sits inside
- PasseriformesPBDB
- 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 least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
145 occurrences of Passerellidae 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
145 occurrences- Mioceneunder 1%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistocene93%
- Holocene7%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Passerellidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 142 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Passerellidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Passerellidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,047 taxa- Pipilo naufragus23 sites
- Falco sparverius20 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps16 sites
- Colaptes auratus14 sites
- Melospiza melodia14 sites
- Zenaida macroura14 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis13 sites
- Tyto alba13 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus12 sites
- Megascops asio11 sites
- Athene cunicularia10 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos10 sites
- Corvus corax10 sites
- Eremophila alpestris10 sites
- Porzana carolina10 sites
- Rallus limicola10 sites
- Zonotrichia leucophrys10 sites
- Accipiter cooperii9 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos9 sites
- Branta canadensis9 sites
- Buteo9 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius9 sites
- Junco hyemalis9 sites
- Turdus migratorius9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 61 sites for Passerellidae, 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
30 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 Deposits28
- A new species of towhee (Aves: Emberizidae: Pipilo) from Quaternary deposits on Bermuda23
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula19
- Records of fringillids from the Pleistocene of Rancho La Brea10
- Fossil fringillids from Rancho la Brea7
- Fifty-eighth supplement to the American Ornithological Society's Check-list of North American Birds6
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave6
- The fossil Birds of California6
- The Pleistocene avifauna of Arredondo, Florida5
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming4
- Notes on fossil and subfossil birds4
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida3
Each of the 145 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. 18 further references are not listed. 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 Passerellidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Wolfgang Wander
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itPasseriformes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cabanis 1851