Junco hyemalis
The dark-eyed junco is a species of junco, a group of small, grayish New World sparrows. The species is common across much of temperate North America and in summer it ranges far into the Arctic. It is a variable species, much like the related fox sparrow, and its systematics are still not completely resolved.

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
- dark-eyed juncoPBDB
- Sits inside
- JuncoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 1.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka.
10 occurrences of Junco hyemalis 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
10 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.
Junco hyemalis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Junco hyemalis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
521 taxa- Falco sparverius7 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus6 sites
- Anas crecca6 sites
- Buteo6 sites
- Colaptes auratus6 sites
- Zenaida macroura6 sites
- Zonotrichia leucophrys6 sites
- Colinus virginianus5 sites
- Eremophila alpestris5 sites
- Megascops asio5 sites
- Melospiza melodia5 sites
- Passerculus sandwichensis5 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps5 sites
- Porzana carolina5 sites
- Bubo virginianus4 sites
- Chondestes grammacus4 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos4 sites
- Gallinago gallinago4 sites
- Picoides villosus4 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus4 sites
- Turdus migratorius4 sites
- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Aegolius acadicus3 sites
- Anas3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Junco hyemalis, 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
6 references- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula4
- 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
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- Fossil fringillids from Rancho la Brea1
Each of the 10 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 Junco hyemalis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Cephas
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- 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 itJunco through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)