Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax
The red-billed chough, Cornish chough or simply chough is a bird in the crow family, one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax. Its eight subspecies breed on mountains and coastal cliffs from the western coasts of Ireland and Britain east through southern Europe, North Africa and Middle East to Central Asia, India and China.

Alun Williams333 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- red-billed choughPBDB
- Sits inside
- PyrrhocoraxPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Corvidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Corvidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Corvidae
- Mass
- 263 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
21 occurrences of Pyrrhocorax 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
21 occurrences- Pleistocene81%
- Holocene19%
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 pyrrhocorax and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
304 taxa- Pyrrhocorax graculus15 sites
- Turdus11 sites
- Falco tinnunculus9 sites
- Corvus monedula8 sites
- Accipiter gentilis7 sites
- Columba7 sites
- Columba livia7 sites
- Columba oenas7 sites
- Columba palumbus7 sites
- Corvus corone7 sites
- Coturnix coturnix7 sites
- Canis lupus6 sites
- Corvus corax6 sites
- Turdus iliacus6 sites
- Ursus arctos6 sites
- Athene noctua5 sites
- Buteo buteo5 sites
- Corvus5 sites
- Erithacus rubecula5 sites
- Passeriformes5 sites
- Perdix perdix5 sites
- Scolopax rusticola5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
- Vulpes vulpes5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Pyrrhocorax 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
15 references- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece4
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate2
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
- Upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossil avifauna from Moleta cave (Mallorca, Balearic Islands)2
- 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)1
- The bird assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic level I of Arbreda Cave: A taphonomic story1
- Avian remains from new Upper Pleistocene and Holocene sites in the Spanish Pyrenees1
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site1
- Reinterpretation of the late Pleistocene Ingarano cave deposit based on the fossil bird associations (Apulia, south-eastern Italy)1
- The late Pleistocene fossil avian remains from Grotta dei Fiori, Carbonia (SW Sardinia, Italy)1
- A new species of extinct flightless passerine (Emberizidae: Emberiza) from the Canary Islands1
Each of the 21 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. 3 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 content3
Picture of Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alun Williams333
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax · NHMUK:ZOO:A/1994.2.1
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itPyrrhocorax through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)