Vanellus vanellus
The northern lapwing, also known as the peewit or pewit, tuit or tewit, green plover, or pyewipe or just lapwing, is a bird in the lapwing subfamily. It is common through temperate Eurosiberia.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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 lapwingPBDB
- Sits inside
- VanellusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 25.5 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 1.8 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Vanellus vanellus 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
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.
Vanellus vanellus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Vanellus vanellus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
46 taxa- Alauda arvensis2 sites
- Alectoris2 sites
- Anser albifrons2 sites
- Athene noctua2 sites
- Calandrella2 sites
- Calidris pugnax2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Corvus pliocaenus2 sites
- Falco peregrinus2 sites
- Galerida2 sites
- Garrulus glandarius2 sites
- Grus grus2 sites
- Melanocorypha calandra2 sites
- Palaeocryptonyx donnezani2 sites
- Perdix palaeoperdix2 sites
- Pica pica2 sites
- Pterocles orientalis2 sites
- Scolopax rusticola2 sites
- Sturnus vulgaris2 sites
- Tadorna ferruginea2 sites
- Tetrax tetrax2 sites
- Turdus merula2 sites
- Anas1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Vanellus vanellus, 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
2 references- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)2
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)2
Each of the 4 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Vanellus vanellus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Vanellus vanellus was found in Sketchfab.
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 itVanellus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)