Mimus polyglottos
The northern mockingbird is a mockingbird commonly found in North America, of the family Mimidae. The species is also found in some parts of the Caribbean, as well as on the Hawaiian Islands. It is typically a permanent resident across much of its range, but northern mockingbirds may move farther south during inclement weather or prior to the onset of winter. The northern mockingbird has gray to brown upper feathers and a paler belly. Its tail and wings have white patches which are visible in flight.

Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 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
- northern mockingbirdPBDB
- Sits inside
- MimusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Mimidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Mimidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mimidae
- Mass
- 48 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.
6 occurrences of Mimus polyglottos 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- Pleistocene79%
- Holocene21%
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.
Mimus polyglottos and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Mimus polyglottos and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
269 taxa- Columbina passerina4 sites
- Tyrannus dominicensis4 sites
- Athene cunicularia3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Margarops fuscatus3 sites
- Patagioenas leucocephala3 sites
- Patagioenas squamosa3 sites
- Porzana carolina3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Zenaida macroura3 sites
- Actitis macularius2 sites
- Agelaius xanthomus2 sites
- Ammodramus savannarum2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Antrostomus noctitherus2 sites
- Arenaria interpres2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Branta canadensis2 sites
- Butorides virescens2 sites
- Capella anthonyi2 sites
- Charadrius vociferus2 sites
- Coccyzus vieilloti2 sites
- Gallus gallus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Mimus polyglottos, 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- Bird remains from the caves of Porto Rico2
- 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
- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida1
- Fossil birds from the Dominican Republic1
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 Mimus polyglottos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rhododendrites
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- Mimus polyglottos · BRUCE:2016.01.227:BRUCE2016_01_227
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 itMimus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)