Passer Predomesticus

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Passer predomesticus is a fossil passerine bird in the sparrow family Passeridae. First described in 1962, it is known from two premaxillary (upper jaw) bones found in a middle Pleistocene layer of the Oumm-Qatafa cave in Palestine. The premaxillaries resemble those of the House and Spanish Sparrows, but differ in having a deep groove instead of a crest on the lower side. Israeli paleontologist Eitan Tchernov, who described the species, and others have considered it to be close to the ancestor of the House and Spanish Sparrows, but molecular data point to an earlier origin of modern sparrow species. Occurring in a climate Tchernov described as similar to but rainier than that in Palestine today, it was considered by Tchernov as a "wild" ancestor of sparrows with commensal association with humans, although its presence in Oumm-Qatafa cave may indicate an association with humans.