Carpinus betulus
Carpinus betulus, the European or common hornbeam, is a species of tree in the birch family Betulaceae, native to Western Asia and central, eastern, and southern Europe, including southern England. It requires a warm climate for good growth, and occurs only at elevations up to 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). It grows in mixed stands with oak, and in some areas beech, and is also a common tree in scree forests. Hornbeam was also known as yoke elm. Together with Carpinus orientalis and Carpinus austrobalcanica, it is one of the three hornbeams found in Europe.

Willow · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- CarpinusPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 9 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 11.7 ka.
24 occurrences of Carpinus betulus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
24 occurrences- Miocene60%
- Pliocene32%
- Pleistocene8%
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.
Carpinus betulus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Carpinus betulus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
79 taxa- Fagus3 sites
- Acer2 sites
- Betula2 sites
- Fraxinus2 sites
- Ostrya2 sites
- Planatus sp.2 sites
- Pterocarya2 sites
- Tilia2 sites
- Ulmus2 sites
- Abies1 site
- Acer campestre1 site
- Actinidia1 site
- Ailanthus confucii1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Alnus kefersteinii1 site
- Ampelopsis tertiaria1 site
- Aralia1 site
- Azolla1 site
- Butomus1 site
- Carex1 site
- Carylus sp.1 site
- Celtis australis1 site
- Cephalanthus1 site
- Chamaecyparis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Carpinus betulus, 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
6 references- Die mittelmiozaenen und obermiozaenen Floren aus der Meuroer und Raunoer Folge in der Lausitz. III. Fundstellen und Palaeobiologie12
- Allochthonous seed and fruit floras from the Pliocene of the Lower Rhine Basin4
- Die pliozaenen Floren von Thueringen, Deutsche Demokratische Republik3
- La stratigraphie du remplissage de la Grotte du Vallonnet.2
- Miocene floras in the lower Rhenish basin and their ecological interpretation2
- Die "Saugbaggerflora", eine Frucht- und Samenflora aus dem Grenzbereich Miozaen- Pliozaen von Sessenheim im Elsass (Frankreich)1
Each of the 24 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 Carpinus betulus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Willow
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itCarpinus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753