Corvus brachyrhynchos
The American crow is a large passerine bird species of the family Corvidae. It is a common bird found throughout much of North America, only absent from the tundra biome. The American crow is the New World counterpart to the carrion crow and the hooded crow of Eurasia, occupying similar ecological niches.

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- American crowPBDB
- Sits inside
- CorvusPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Corvidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Corvidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Corvidae
Time the record covers
At least 198 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 210 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.4 Mya to 0 Mya.
37 occurrences of Corvus brachyrhynchos 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
37 occurrences- Pleistocene54%
- Holocene46%
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.
Found in
2 formations
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The named rock units Corvus brachyrhynchos has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 35 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Corvus brachyrhynchos and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Corvus brachyrhynchos and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
774 taxa- Buteo20 sites
- Numenius americanus20 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos19 sites
- Corvus corax19 sites
- Tyto alba19 sites
- Anas18 sites
- Antigone canadensis17 sites
- Larus17 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus17 sites
- Anatinae15 sites
- Anserinae15 sites
- Falco sparverius15 sites
- Ardea herodias14 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis14 sites
- Melanitta14 sites
- Phalacrocorax14 sites
- Phalacrocorax penicillatus14 sites
- Uria14 sites
- Aythya13 sites
- Branta canadensis13 sites
- Falco peregrinus13 sites
- Cathartes aura12 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus12 sites
- Bubo virginianus11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Corvus brachyrhynchos, 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
18 references- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna15
- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California3
- The fossil Birds of California3
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula2
- Late Pleistocene birds from Kingston Saltpeter Cave, southern Appalachian Mountains, Georgia1
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- Fossil birds from the late Pleistocene Ingleside fauna, San Patricio County, Texas1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida1
- The Moore Pit local fauna; Pleistocene of Texas1
- The Pleistocene vertebrate fauna of Reddick, Florida1
Each of the 37 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. 6 further references are not listed. 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 Corvus brachyrhynchos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itCorvus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brehm 1822