Calandrella brachydactyla
The greater short-toed lark is a small passerine bird. The current scientific name is from Ancient Greek. The genus name, Calandrella, is a diminutive of kalandros, the calandra lark, and brachydactila is from brakhus, "short", and daktulos, "toe".

Juan Lacruz · 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
- greater short-toed larkPBDB
- Sits inside
- CalandrellaPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, granivorePBDB, for Alaudidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Alaudidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Alaudidae
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka.
3 occurrences of Calandrella brachydactyla 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Calandrella brachydactyla and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Calandrella brachydactyla and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
149 taxa- Columba livia3 sites
- Scolopax rusticola3 sites
- Sturnus3 sites
- Corvidae2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Emberiza2 sites
- Erithacus rubecula2 sites
- Falco eleonorae2 sites
- Falco tinnunculus2 sites
- Lacerta2 sites
- Lullula arborea2 sites
- Otus scops2 sites
- Prunella modularis2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus2 sites
- Turdus2 sites
- Accipiter gentilis1 site
- Accipiter nisus1 site
- Aegolius funereus1 site
- Aegolius martae1 site
- Alauda arvensis1 site
- Allocricetus1 site
- Allophaiomys1 site
- Alytes obstetricans1 site
- Anas1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Calandrella brachydactyla, 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
3 references- The Middle Pleistocene avifauna of Spinagallo Cave (Sicily, Italy): preliminary report1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
- The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece1
Each of the 3 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 Calandrella brachydactyla
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Juan Lacruz
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Calandrella brachydactyla was found in Sketchfab.
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 itCalandrella through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leisler 1814)