Xenicus
Xenicus is a genus of birds in the family Acanthisittidae. It contains New Zealand wrens.

Buller, Walter Lawry, A History of the Birds of New Zealand , 2nd edition. J.G. Keulemans delt & lith, printed by Jud… · 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- Sits inside
- AcanthisittidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Xenicus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
8 occurrences- Pleistocene23%
- Holocene77%
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.
Xenicus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Xenicus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
77 taxa- Cyanoramphus8 sites
- Hoplodactylus maculatus8 sites
- Mystacina robusta8 sites
- Petroica australis8 sites
- Rattus exulans8 sites
- Turnagra capensis8 sites
- Aegotheles novaezealandiae7 sites
- Coenocorypha aucklandica7 sites
- Mohoua ochrocephala7 sites
- Rhipidura fuliginosa6 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae5 sites
- Mohoua novaeseelandiae5 sites
- Acanthisitta chloris4 sites
- Anthornis melanura4 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae4 sites
- Hoplodactylus duvaucelii4 sites
- Mus musculus4 sites
- Oligosoma lineoocellatum4 sites
- Passer domesticus4 sites
- Petroica macrocephala4 sites
- Sphenodon4 sites
- Tadorna variegata4 sites
- Callaeas cinereus3 sites
- Gerygone igata3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Xenicus, 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
2 references- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand6
- Taphonomy of two holocene microvertebrate deposits, Takaka Hill, Nelson, New Zealand, and identification of the avian predator responsible2
Each of the 8 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Xenicus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Buller, Walter Lawry, A History of the Birds of New Zealand , 2nd edition. J.G. Keulemans delt & lith, printed by Jud…
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Xenicus gilviventris · NHMUK:ZOO:1940.12.8.145
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, “Xenicus”
- 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 itAcanthisittidae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray