Sorex minutus
The Eurasian pygmy shrew, often known simply as the pygmy shrew, is a widespread shrew of the northern Palearctic.

Importé sur Commons par Salix. Sur Flikr par Polandeze · 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 pygmy shrewPBDB
- Sits inside
- SorexPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Soricidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Soricidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 4.16 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.09 Mya to 11.7 ka.
58 occurrences of Sorex minutus 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
58 occurrences- Pliocene18%
- Pleistocene83%
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 Sorex minutus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 54 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Sorex minutus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sorex minutus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
602 taxa- Mimomys37 sites
- Myodes34 sites
- Beremendia fissidens32 sites
- Microtus30 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus29 sites
- Allocricetus25 sites
- Pliomys25 sites
- Talpa minor23 sites
- Sorex runtonensis22 sites
- Lepus19 sites
- Citellus18 sites
- Petenyia hungarica18 sites
- Talpa fossilis18 sites
- Cricetus cricetus17 sites
- Equus17 sites
- Sciurus16 sites
- Sicista praeloriger16 sites
- Erinaceus15 sites
- Rana14 sites
- Apodemus13 sites
- Arvicola13 sites
- Glis sackdillingensis13 sites
- Mustela palermina13 sites
- Ochotona13 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 57 sites for Sorex minutus, 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
21 references- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary11
- Pliocene and Pleistocene Insectivora (Mammalia) of Poland. VIII. Soricidae: Sorex Linnaeus, 1758, Neomys Kaup, 1829, Macroneomys Fejfar, 1966, Paenelimnoecus Baudelot, 1972 and Soricidae indeterminata.10
- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung8
- Biochronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Betfia (Bihor, Romania)7
- The vertebrate fauna from the interglacial deposits at Sugworth near Oxford3
- The Villafranchian mammalian faunas and biochronology of Greece2
- Le gisement Pleistocene moyen et superieur d'Artenac (Saint-Mary, Charent): premier bilan interdisciplinaire2
- New microstratigraphic horizons in the vertebrate chronology of the Hungarian Pleistocene2
- Plio-Pleistocene biogeography of Italian mainland micromammals1
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals1
- Biostratigraphy and paleoecology of continental Tertiary vertebrate faunas in the Lower Rhine Embayment (NW-Germany)1
- The Biharian fauna from Monte La Mesa (Verona, northeastern Italy)1
Each of the 58 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. 9 further references are not listed. 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 Sorex minutus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Importé sur Commons par Salix. Sur Flikr par Polandeze
- 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 itSorex through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1766