Fringilla coelebs
The Eurasian chaffinch, common chaffinch, or simply the chaffinch is a common and widespread small passerine bird – in the finch family. The male is brightly coloured with a blue-grey cap and rust-red underparts. The female is more subdued in colouring, but both sexes have two contrasting white wing bars and white sides to the tail. The male bird has a strong voice and sings from exposed perches to attract a mate.

caroline legg · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- common chaffinchPBDB
- Sits inside
- FringillaPBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Fringillidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Mass
- 22 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
6 occurrences of Fringilla coelebs on record. 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- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene67%
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.
Found in the same rock
195 taxa- Carduelis carduelis4 sites
- Passer domesticus4 sites
- Turdus philomelos4 sites
- Alauda arvensis3 sites
- Bufo viridis3 sites
- Columba livia3 sites
- Corvus monedula3 sites
- Discoglossus3 sites
- Episoriculus corsicanus3 sites
- Erithacus rubecula3 sites
- Microtus (Tyrrhenicola) henseli3 sites
- Natrix natrix3 sites
- Parus major3 sites
- Prolagus sardus3 sites
- Rhagamys orthodon3 sites
- Sturnus3 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos2 sites
- Chloris chloris2 sites
- Coccothraustes coccothraustes2 sites
- Coluber2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Mus musculus2 sites
- Muscicapa striata2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Fringilla coelebs, 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- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover3
- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand2
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
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 Fringilla coelebs
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- caroline legg
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itFringilla through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758