Pyrrhocorax
A chough is any of two species of passerine birds that constitute the genus Pyrrhocorax of the Corvidae (crow) family. These are the red-billed chough and the Alpine chough. The white-winged chough of Australia, despite its name, is a member of the family Corcoracidae and only distantly related.

Ken Billington · 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
- choughPBDB
- Sits inside
- CorvidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Corvidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Corvidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Corvidae
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
85 occurrences of Pyrrhocorax 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
85 occurrences- Pleistocene86%
- Holocene14%
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.
Pyrrhocorax and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pyrrhocorax and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
509 taxa- Passeriformes21 sites
- Turdus21 sites
- Corvus monedula18 sites
- Columba livia17 sites
- Corvidae15 sites
- Coturnix coturnix14 sites
- Columba13 sites
- Erithacus rubecula13 sites
- Falco tinnunculus13 sites
- Tyto alba13 sites
- Aves12 sites
- Chloris chloris11 sites
- Columba palumbus11 sites
- Corvus corone11 sites
- Coccothraustes coccothraustes10 sites
- Columba oenas10 sites
- Corvus corax10 sites
- Scolopax rusticola10 sites
- Sturnus10 sites
- Accipiter gentilis9 sites
- Emberiza9 sites
- Galliformes9 sites
- Lyrurus tetrix9 sites
- Perdix perdix9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 56 sites for Pyrrhocorax, 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
26 references- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate11
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)11
- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece11
- The end of the Pleistocene in south-western Europe: The avian assemblages from Heinrich event 3 to the Last Glacial Maximum in the Prades mountains (north-eastern Iberian Peninsula)7
- Avian remains from new Upper Pleistocene and Holocene sites in the Spanish Pyrenees6
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview5
- Reinterpretation of the late Pleistocene Ingarano cave deposit based on the fossil bird associations (Apulia, south-eastern Italy)4
- The bird assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic level I of Arbreda Cave: A taphonomic story3
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)3
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover3
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach2
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
Each of the 85 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. 14 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 Pyrrhocorax
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ken Billington
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Chough”
- 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 itCorvidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Tunstall 1771