Corvus corone
The carrion crow is a passerine bird of the family Corvidae, native to western Europe and the eastern Palearctic. Along with the hooded crow, the carrion crow occupies a similar ecological niche in Eurasia to the American crow in North America. The two species look very similar to one another, but can be differentiated by size, as the carrion crow is larger and of a stockier build compared to the American crow.

Alexis Lours · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- carrion 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 most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
19 occurrences of Corvus corone 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
19 occurrences- Pleistocene73%
- Holocene27%
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.
Corvus corone and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Corvus corone and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
331 taxa- Pyrrhocorax graculus9 sites
- Perdix perdix8 sites
- Corvus corax7 sites
- Corvus monedula7 sites
- Coturnix coturnix7 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax7 sites
- Columba livia6 sites
- Turdus philomelos6 sites
- Turdus viscivorus6 sites
- Athene noctua5 sites
- Falco tinnunculus5 sites
- Accipitridae4 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos4 sites
- Canis lupus4 sites
- Falco vespertinus4 sites
- Haliaeetus albicilla4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Turdus4 sites
- Turdus merula4 sites
- Turdus pilaris4 sites
- Ursus arctos4 sites
- Accipiter gentilis3 sites
- Alectoris graeca3 sites
- Alectoris rufa3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Corvus corone, 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
12 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)6
- Reinterpretation of the late Pleistocene Ingarano cave deposit based on the fossil bird associations (Apulia, south-eastern Italy)2
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover2
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- The bird assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic level I of Arbreda Cave: A taphonomic story1
- Pleistocene birds of Gruta da Furninha (Peniche-Portugal): a paleontological and paleoenvironmental aproach1
- New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
- Bird bones from Jettböle I, a site in the Neolithic Åland archipelago in the northern Baltic1
- La grotte de l'Observatoire à Monaco1
Each of the 19 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 content3
Picture of Corvus corone
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alexis Lours
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Corvus corone · umzc:vertebrates:UMZC_uncatalogued_frozenA5
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Chapel_Prints_CO
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access was 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. Linnaeus 1758