Sorex fumeus
The smoky shrew is a medium-sized North American shrew found in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States and further south along the Appalachian Mountains.

Max Ramirez, National Park Service · Public Domain · 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
- smoky shrewPBDB
- Sits inside
- SorexPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Soricidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Soricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 81 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.4 Mya to 0 Mya.
15 occurrences of Sorex fumeus 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
15 occurrences- Pleistocene98%
- Holocene2%
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.
Sorex fumeus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sorex fumeus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
430 taxa- Marmota monax14 sites
- Neotoma floridana14 sites
- Synaptomys cooperi13 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus12 sites
- Sorex cinereus12 sites
- Clethrionomys gapperi11 sites
- Microtus pennsylvanicus11 sites
- Procyon lotor11 sites
- Spermophilus tridecemlineatus11 sites
- Tamias striatus11 sites
- Blarina brevicauda10 sites
- Microtus chrotorrhinus10 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus10 sites
- Tamiasciurus hudsonicus10 sites
- Castor canadensis9 sites
- Erethizon dorsatum9 sites
- Glaucomys volans9 sites
- Microtus9 sites
- Myotis9 sites
- Peromyscus9 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus9 sites
- Microtus pinetorum8 sites
- Mictomys borealis8 sites
- Ondatra zibethicus8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Sorex fumeus, 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
10 references- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna5
- Paleontology and historic field trip of the John Guilday Cave Preserve (Trout Rock)2
- Fossil Mammals From Island Ford Cave, Virginia, USA1
- Ecological Significance of Displaced Boreal Mammals in West Virginia Caves1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- Post-Wisconsinan Vertebrate Remains from a Fissure Deposit Near Ripplemead, Virginia1
- The Pleistocene history of the Appalachian mammal fauna1
- Pleistocene mammals from Ladds, Bartow County, Georgia1
- The Pleistocene local fauna of the Natural Chimneys, Augusta County, Virginia1
- The Pleistocene vertebrate fauna from Cumberland Cave, Maryland1
Each of the 15 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 content2
Picture of Sorex fumeus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Max Ramirez, National Park Service
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- MCZ Mammalogy
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Sorex fumeus fumeus · MCZ:Mamm:69625
Smithsonian Open Access was 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, “Smoky shrew”
- 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 itSorex through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Miller 1895