Contopus
The pewees are a genus, Contopus, of small to medium-sized insect-eating birds in the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrannidae.

JerryFriedman · 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
- peweePBDB
- Sits inside
- TyrannidaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Tyrannidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Tyrannidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Tyrannidae
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.
6 occurrences of Contopus 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene20%
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.
Contopus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Contopus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
330 taxa- Patagioenas leucocephala4 sites
- Petrochelidon fulva4 sites
- Athene cunicularia3 sites
- Columbina passerina3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Mimus polyglottos3 sites
- Patagioenas squamosa3 sites
- Tiaris bicolor3 sites
- Tyrannus dominicensis3 sites
- Accipiter striatus2 sites
- Asio2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Calyptophilus frugivorus2 sites
- Charadrius vociferus2 sites
- Coccyzus longirostris2 sites
- Coccyzus rufigularis2 sites
- Dulus dominicus2 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus2 sites
- Geotrygon2 sites
- Loxigilla violacea2 sites
- Margarops fuscatus2 sites
- Melanerpes striatus2 sites
- Melospiza melodia2 sites
- Nesoctites micromegas2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Contopus, 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
5 references- Fossil birds from the Dominican Republic2
- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- Exceptionally well preserved late Quaternary plant and vertebrate fossils from a blue hole on Abaco, The Bahamas1
- The Pleistocene local fauna of the Natural Chimneys, Augusta County, Virginia1
- Bird remains from the caves of Porto Rico1
Each of the 6 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 Contopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JerryFriedman
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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
- Contopus sordidulus · NHMUK:ZOO:S/1984.77.53
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, “Pewee”
- 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 itTyrannidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cabanis 1855