Sciurus vulgaris
The red squirrel, also called Eurasian red squirrel, is a species of tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus. It is an arboreal and primarily herbivorous rodent and common throughout Eurasia.

Peter Trimming · 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
- Eurasian red squirrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- SciurusPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Sciurus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
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.
8 occurrences of Sciurus vulgaris 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
8 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.
Found in
3 formations
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The named rock units Sciurus vulgaris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Sciurus vulgaris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sciurus vulgaris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
176 taxa- Apodemus sylvaticus5 sites
- Microtus5 sites
- Allocricetus3 sites
- Arvicola3 sites
- Bos primigenius3 sites
- Capreolus3 sites
- Capreolus capreolus3 sites
- Cervus elaphus3 sites
- Equus3 sites
- Erinaceus3 sites
- Lepus3 sites
- Myodes3 sites
- Rana3 sites
- Sorex3 sites
- Sorex minutus3 sites
- Sus scrofa3 sites
- Vulpes vulpes3 sites
- Anguis fragilis2 sites
- Anura2 sites
- Bufo bufo2 sites
- Canis lupus2 sites
- Colubridae2 sites
- Coronella austriaca2 sites
- Corvus monedula2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Sciurus vulgaris, 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- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung2
- The Vertebrata of the Forest Bed Series of Norfolk and Suffolk2
- New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site1
- The Paleofaunal Context1
- Magneto- and cyclostratigraphy and mammal-fauna’s of the Pleistocene lacustrine Megalopolis Basin, Peloponnesos, Greece1
- New microstratigraphic horizons in the vertebrate chronology of the Hungarian Pleistocene1
Each of the 8 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 content3
Picture of Sciurus vulgaris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Peter Trimming
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- 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
- Sciurus vulgaris vulgaris · UMMZ:mammals:80280
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itSciurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758