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When do the oldest known woodpecker fossils date from?

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downy woodpecker — Piciform Downy woodpecker (*Dendrocopos pubescens*).

Fossil records for the order Piciformes are quite limited, and many older identifications of early "woodpecker" fossils have been called into question or reclassified. Currently, confirmed fossil woodpeckers are known only from the Pliocene Epoch, which dates from approximately 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago.1