Picidae

Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. Most species live in forests or woodland habitats, although a few species are known that live in treeless areas, such as rocky hillsides and deserts, and the Gila woodpecker specializes in exploiting cacti.

Picidae

Joshlaymon · 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
woodpeckerPBDB
Sits inside
PiciformesPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB
Life habit
volantPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 37 million years on record.

The record covers at least 37.71 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 0 Mya.

Eocene — about 2 of 131 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 131 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 131 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 131 occurrencesPleistocene — about 110 of 131 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–44 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences44–42 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41–39 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–38 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences11–9.8 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences9.8–8.2 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences8.2–6.5 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences6.5–4.9 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences4.9–3.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences3.3–1.6 Mya — about 6 occurrences1.6–0 Mya — about 121 occurrences37.71 Mya11.7 ka49 Mya0 Mya

131 occurrences of Picidae 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

131 occurrences

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

3 formations

Bridger — 41.04°N, 110.23°WBridger — 41.05°N, 110.31°WWicomico — 29.60°N, 82.42°WOgallala — 39.08°N, 99.75°W

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The named rock units Picidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 126 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Picidae and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Picidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

1,569 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 78 sites for Picidae, 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

59 references

Each of the 131 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. 47 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 Picidae

Credit
Joshlaymon
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
bcbirds
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

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 itPiciformes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vigors 1825