Grus grus
The common crane, also known as the Eurasian crane, is a bird of the family Gruidae, the cranes. A medium-sized species, it is the only crane commonly found in Europe besides the demoiselle crane and the Siberian crane that only are regular in the far eastern part of the continent. Along with the sandhill crane, demoiselle crane and the brolga, it is one of only four crane species not currently classified as threatened with extinction or conservation dependent on the species level. Despite the species' large numbers, local extinctions and extirpations have taken place in part of its range, and an ongoing reintroduction project is underway in the United Kingdom.

Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 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- Also called
- Common cranePBDB
- Sits inside
- GrusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
12 occurrences of Grus grus 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
12 occurrences- Pleistocene74%
- Holocene26%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Grus grus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Grus grus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Grus grus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
137 taxa- Anas platyrhynchos3 sites
- Accipiter gentilis2 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus2 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Athene noctua2 sites
- Charadriiformes2 sites
- Columba palumbus2 sites
- Corvus corax2 sites
- Corvus corone2 sites
- Galliformes2 sites
- Gallinula chloropus2 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius2 sites
- Melanocorypha calandra2 sites
- Otis tarda2 sites
- Passeriformes2 sites
- Pelecanus crispus2 sites
- Rallidae2 sites
- Scolopax rusticola2 sites
- Sturnus vulgaris2 sites
- Tetrax tetrax2 sites
- Trionyx triunguis2 sites
- Turdus2 sites
- Turdus merula2 sites
- Vanellus vanellus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Grus grus, 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
8 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)5
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- Early Pleistocene birds from Pirro Nord (Puglia, southern Italy)1
- The fossil bird associations from the early Middle Pleistocene of the Ragusa province (SE Sicily, Italy)1
- Faunal remains from Alcáçova de Santarém, Portugal1
- Relationships of the Late Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Kom Ombo, Upper Egypt1
- Kom Ombo: Preliminary Report on the Fauna of Late Paleolithic Sites in Upper Egypt1
- Avian remains from the Pleistocene of central Java1
Each of the 12 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 Grus grus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- 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
- Grus grus grus · nms:z:1904.80.6
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Tavernier Amaury
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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 itGrus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)