Turdus migratorius
The American robin is a migratory bird of the true thrush genus and Turdidae, the wider thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, though the two species are not closely related, with the European robin belonging to the Old World flycatcher family. The American robin is widely distributed throughout North America, wintering from southern Canada to central Mexico and along the Pacific coast.

Rhododendrites · 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 robinPBDB
- Sits inside
- TurdusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Turdidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Turdidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Turdidae
- Mass
- 77.3 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Turdus migratorius 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
11 occurrences- Pleistocene99%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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.
Turdus migratorius and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Turdus migratorius and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
569 taxa- Falco sparverius9 sites
- Colaptes auratus7 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis6 sites
- Corvus corax6 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius6 sites
- Eremophila alpestris6 sites
- Sturnella neglecta6 sites
- Accipiter striatus5 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus5 sites
- Charadrius vociferus5 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus5 sites
- Passerella iliaca5 sites
- Zenaida macroura5 sites
- Aegolius acadicus4 sites
- Anas crecca4 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos4 sites
- Asio flammeus4 sites
- Athene cunicularia4 sites
- Bonasa umbellus4 sites
- Branta canadensis4 sites
- Bubo virginianus4 sites
- Bufo4 sites
- Catharus guttatus4 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Turdus migratorius, 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
9 references- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits3
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from northwestern Alabama1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- The Late Wisconsinan vertebrate fauna from Deadman Cave, southern Arizona1
- Evidence of a Boreal Avifauna in Middle Tennessee during the Late Pleistocene1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California1
- Notes on fossil and subfossil birds1
- The fossil Birds of California1
Each of the 11 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 Turdus migratorius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rhododendrites
- 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 itTurdus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758