Haemorhous purpureus
The purple finch is a bird in the finch family, Fringillidae. It breeds in the northern United States, southern Canada, and the west coast of North America.

Cephas · 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
- purple finchPBDB
- Sits inside
- HaemorhousPBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Fringillidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Fringillidae
- Mass
- 2.34 gWikidata
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.
4 occurrences of Haemorhous purpureus 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene98%
- Holocene2%
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.
Haemorhous purpureus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Haemorhous purpureus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
182 taxa- Aves3 sites
- Eremophila alpestris3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Turdus migratorius3 sites
- Arenaria interpres2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Athene cunicularia2 sites
- Brachyramphus marmoratus2 sites
- Calidris alba2 sites
- Catharus guttatus2 sites
- Catharus ustulatus2 sites
- Cepphus columba2 sites
- Cerorhinca monocerata2 sites
- Charadrius nivosus2 sites
- Charadrius vociferus2 sites
- Chondestes grammacus2 sites
- Clethrionomys gapperi2 sites
- Colaptes auratus2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Ectopistes migratorius2 sites
- Glaucomys sabrinus2 sites
- Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus2 sites
- Haemorhous mexicanus2 sites
- Icterus bullockii2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Haemorhous purpureus, 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- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits2
- Quaternary vertebrate localities of Virginia and their avian and mammalian fauna1
- Evidence of a Boreal Avifauna in Middle Tennessee during the Late Pleistocene1
Each of the 4 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 Haemorhous purpureus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Cephas
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- Bruce Museum
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Haemorhous purpureus · BRUCE:2016.01.195:BRUCE2016_01_195
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
- 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 itHaemorhous through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)