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Passer predomesticus
''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 palaeontologist 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 the modern sparrows which have a commensal association with humans, although its presence in Oumm-Qatafa cave may indicate that it was associated with humans.
== Taxonomy ==
The known material of ''Passer predomesticus'' consists of two premaxillary bones in the collections of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The bones were described by Israeli palaeontologist Eitan Tchernov in 1962〔 and reviewed by South African zoologist Miles Markus two years later. Tchernov did not unambiguously identify a type specimen and his paper was said by Robert M. Mengel, the editor of ''The Auk'', to contain "many troublesome lapses and contradictions". In 1975, French palaeontologist Cécile Mourer-Chauviré reported on fossil sparrows from a cave at Saint-Estève-Janson in southeastern France, which could not be identified as either ''P. predomesticus'' or the house sparrow (''Passer domesticus''). Because no premaxillae were found, the bones could not be distinguished from those of the house sparrow.
Tchernov argued that the house sparrow and related species have undergone considerable morphological changes in adapting to a commensal relationship with humans, with the beak becoming longer and narrower. He wrote that ''P. predomesticus'' was intermediate between the house sparrow and Spanish sparrow (''Passer hispaniolensis''), and suggested that it may be a primitive relative of the ancestor of the house sparrow that did not become dependent on humans. In a 1984 paper, Tchernov suggested that the period in which the house sparrow and ''P. predomesticus'' could have separated was the Würm glaciation 70,000–10,000 years ago.〔 Markus found that the fossil species was closest to living house sparrows from Palestine and to the great sparrow (''P. motitensis''), and proposed that the house sparrow evolved in Africa.〔 In a 1977 account of the evolution of the house sparrow, American zoologists Richard F. Johnston and William J. Klitz considered that the house sparrow evolved with the beginning of agriculture, dating any fossils that could even be assigned to the common ancestor of the house and Spanish sparrows as more recent than ''P. predomesticus''. In his 1988 work ''The Sparrows'', British ornithologist J. Denis Summers-Smith considered that ''P. predomesticus'' was roughly contemporary with the common ancestor of the house and Spanish sparrows and that all present-day Palaearctic ''Passer'' species evolved later.〔 Drawing on more recent studies of molecular data, Ted R. Anderson stated in his 2006 ''Biology of the Ubiquitous House Sparrow'' that all ''Passer'' species have a long evolutionary history, with speciation possibly occurring as early as the Miocene.〔
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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