Eremophila alpestris
The horned lark or shore lark is a species of lark in the family Alaudidae found across the northern hemisphere. It is known as "horned lark" in North America for distinctive feathers on the heads of the male birds in summer, and as "shore lark" in Europe because it can be found on shorelines in the winter.

Stephan Sprinz · CC BY 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
- horned larkPBDB
- Sits inside
- EremophilaPBDB
- 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 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.
16 occurrences of Eremophila alpestris 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
16 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.
Eremophila alpestris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Eremophila alpestris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
650 taxa- Falco sparverius10 sites
- Corvus corax9 sites
- Anas crecca7 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis7 sites
- Sturnella neglecta7 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Branta canadensis6 sites
- Colaptes auratus6 sites
- Gallinago gallinago6 sites
- Turdus migratorius6 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus5 sites
- Anser caerulescens5 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos5 sites
- Asio flammeus5 sites
- Athene cunicularia5 sites
- Falco5 sites
- Junco hyemalis5 sites
- Lanius ludovicianus5 sites
- Oreoscoptes montanus5 sites
- Podiceps nigricollis5 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps5 sites
- Ptychoramphus aleuticus5 sites
- Synthliboramphus antiquus5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Eremophila alpestris, 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
13 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
- The fossil Birds of California2
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- Distribution and provenance of fossil avifauna on San Miguel Island1
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
- A late Pleistocene avifauna from San Miguel Island, California1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- The Pleistocene birds of south-eastern England1
- Evidence of a Boreal Avifauna in Middle Tennessee during the Late Pleistocene1
Each of the 16 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. 1 further reference is not listed. 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 content3
Picture of Eremophila alpestris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Stephan Sprinz
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- 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
- Eremophila alpestris · nhmuk:A/1970.43.65
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, “Horned lark”
- 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 itEremophila through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1759)