Tamiasciurus hudsonicus
The American red squirrel is one of three species of tree squirrels currently classified in the genus Tamiasciurus, known as the pine squirrels. The American red squirrel is variously known as the pine squirrel or piney squirrel, North American red squirrel, chickaree, boomer, or simply red squirrel. The squirrel is a small, 200–250 g (7.1–8.8 oz), diurnal mammal that defends a year-round exclusive territory. It feeds primarily on the seeds of conifer cones, and is widely distributed across much of the United States and Canada wherever conifers are common, except in the southwestern United States, where it is replaced by the formerly conspecific southwestern red squirrel, and along the Pacific coast of the United States, where its cousin the Douglas squirrel is found instead.

Charles J. Sharp · 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
- American red squirrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- TamiasciurusPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Tamiasciurus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 198 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
33 occurrences of Tamiasciurus hudsonicus 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
33 occurrences- Pleistocene84%
- Holocene16%
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.
Tamiasciurus hudsonicus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Tamiasciurus hudsonicus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
598 taxa- Marmota monax19 sites
- Clethrionomys gapperi18 sites
- Erethizon dorsatum16 sites
- Microtus pennsylvanicus16 sites
- Neotoma floridana16 sites
- Tamias striatus15 sites
- Castor canadensis14 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus14 sites
- Spermophilus tridecemlineatus14 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus13 sites
- Microtus chrotorrhinus13 sites
- Peromyscus13 sites
- Synaptomys cooperi13 sites
- Ursus americanus13 sites
- Blarina brevicauda12 sites
- Lepus americanus12 sites
- Microtus12 sites
- Mictomys borealis12 sites
- Ondatra zibethicus12 sites
- Procyon lotor12 sites
- Sorex cinereus12 sites
- Martes americana11 sites
- Myotis11 sites
- Neogale vison11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, 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
23 references- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna4
- Paleontology and historic field trip of the John Guilday Cave Preserve (Trout Rock)3
- Ecological Significance of Displaced Boreal Mammals in West Virginia Caves3
- Sciurid rodents from Porcupine Cave, Park Co., Colorado: Irvingtonian diversity and faunal dynamics2
- Descriptions of some Pleistocene vertebrates found in the United States2
- An account of the preliminary excavations in a recently explored Quaternary cave in Shasta County, California2
- After Hopewell in Southern Québec1
- Fossil Mammals From Island Ford Cave, Virginia, USA1
- AMS-dated late Pleistocene taiga vole (Rodentia: Microtus xanthognathus) from northeast British Columbia, Canada: a cautionary lesson in chronology1
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1
- Mid-Wisconsinan vertebrates and their environment from January Cave, Alberta, Canada1
- A preliminary account of the Pleistocene mammals from Patton Cave, Monroe County, West Virginia1
Each of the 33 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. 11 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 Tamiasciurus hudsonicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- 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 itTamiasciurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Erxleben 1777)