Zosteropidae
The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the western Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Guinea. Discounting some widespread members of the genus Zosterops, most species are endemic to single islands or archipelagos. The silvereye, Zosterops lateralis, naturally colonised New Zealand, where it is known as the "wax-eye" or tauhou ("stranger"), from 1855. The silvereye has also been introduced to the Society Islands in French Polynesia, while the Japanese white-eye has been introduced to Hawaii.

User:benjamint444 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- white-eyePBDB
- Sits inside
- PasseriformesPBDB
- 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.
27 occurrences of Zosteropidae 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
27 occurrences- Pleistocene7%
- Holocene93%
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.
Zosteropidae and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Zosteropidae and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
247 taxa- Aplonis opaca10 sites
- Ptilinopus roseicapilla10 sites
- Alopecoenas xanthonurus9 sites
- Passeriformes9 sites
- Porzana9 sites
- Pteropus9 sites
- Zosterops conspicillatus9 sites
- Aerodramus vanikorensis8 sites
- Emballonura semicaudata8 sites
- Squamata8 sites
- Gekkonidae7 sites
- Gallirallus6 sites
- Megapodius laperouse6 sites
- Rallidae6 sites
- Myzomela rubratra5 sites
- Rattus5 sites
- Serpentes5 sites
- Anous stolidus4 sites
- Columbidae4 sites
- Gygis alba candida4 sites
- Perochirus ateles4 sites
- Pluvialis fulva4 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri4 sites
- Ramphotyphlops sp.4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Zosteropidae, 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- The prehistory of vertebrates, especially birds, on Tinian, Aguiguan, and Rota, Northern Mariana Islands11
- The prehistory and biogeography of terrestrial vertebrates on Guam, Mariana Islands5
- A synopsis of the pre-human avifauna of the Mascarene Islands4
- Holocene vertebrate assemblages provide the first evidence for the presence of the barn owl (Tytonidae, Tyto alba) on Socotra Island (Yemen)2
- Mid-Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte on oceanic island Mauritius provides a window into the ecosystem of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus)1
- New findings at Andrahomana Cave, southeastern Madagascar1
- Late Quaternary terrestrial vertebrates from Palawan Islad, Philippines1
- Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact1
- Extinct and extirpated birds from Rota, Mariana Islands1
Each of the 27 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 content1
Picture of Zosteropidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:benjamint444
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Zosteropidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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, “White-eye”
- 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 itPasseriformes through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonaparte 1853