Turdus philomelos
The song thrush is a thrush that breeds across the West Palearctic. It has brown upperparts and black-spotted cream or buff underparts and has four recognised subspecies. Its distinctive song, which features repeated musical phrases, has frequently been referenced in poetry.

Dion Art · 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
- song thrushPBDB
- Sits inside
- TurdusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, frugivorePBDB, for Turdidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Turdidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Turdidae
- Mass
- 72 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
20 occurrences of Turdus philomelos 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
20 occurrences- Pleistocene55%
- Holocene45%
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.
Turdus philomelos and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Turdus philomelos and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
406 taxa- Corvus monedula9 sites
- Corvus corax8 sites
- Sturnus vulgaris8 sites
- Turdus merula8 sites
- Columba livia6 sites
- Corvus corone6 sites
- Turdus viscivorus6 sites
- Alauda arvensis5 sites
- Carduelis carduelis5 sites
- Coturnix coturnix5 sites
- Cyanoramphus5 sites
- Erithacus rubecula5 sites
- Lagopus lagopus5 sites
- Passer domesticus5 sites
- Turdus pilaris5 sites
- Anguis fragilis4 sites
- Bufo bufo4 sites
- Chloris chloris4 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae4 sites
- Emberiza citrinella4 sites
- Fringilla coelebs4 sites
- Mus musculus4 sites
- Natrix natrix4 sites
- Perdix perdix4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Turdus philomelos, 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
9 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)7
- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand4
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover3
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site1
- Implications of the avian fauna for palaeoecology in the Early Pleistocene of the Iberian Peninsula1
- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand1
- Bird bones form Soldier's Hole Cheddar, Somerset1
- Pleistocene and prehistoric birds of south-west Britain1
Each of the 20 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 Turdus philomelos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dion Art
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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
- Turdus philomelos · umzc:vertebrates:UMZC_uncatalogued_frozen9
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Song thrush”
- 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 itTurdus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brehm 1831