Oryctolagus cuniculus
The European rabbit or coney is a species of rabbit native to the Iberian Peninsula and southwestern France. It has been introduced to hundreds of locations around the world. Wild and domesticated European rabbits around the world can vary widely in size, shape, and colour. The average adult European rabbit is smaller than the European hare, though size and weight vary with habitat and diet.

euqirneto · 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
- European rabbitPBDB
- Sits inside
- OryctolagusPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Leporidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Leporidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
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.
47 occurrences of Oryctolagus cuniculus 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
47 occurrences- Pleistocene89%
- Holocene11%
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 Oryctolagus cuniculus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 46 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Oryctolagus cuniculus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Oryctolagus cuniculus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
409 taxa- Equus27 sites
- Bos primigenius19 sites
- Cervus elaphus19 sites
- Sus scrofa15 sites
- Dama13 sites
- Canis lupus12 sites
- Lepus12 sites
- Microtus12 sites
- Microtus arvalis12 sites
- Aves10 sites
- Equus caballus10 sites
- Stephanorhinus hemitoechus10 sites
- Carnivora9 sites
- Palaeoloxodon antiquus9 sites
- Testudo hermanni9 sites
- Vulpes vulpes9 sites
- Apodemus8 sites
- Crocuta crocuta8 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus7 sites
- Cervidae7 sites
- Cervus7 sites
- Eliomys7 sites
- Hemitragus7 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 46 sites for Oryctolagus cuniculus, 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
24 references- From tortoises to elephants: the impact of elephants in the broad spectrum diet at Bolomor Cave (MIS 9–5 Spain)11
- El yacimiento mesopleistoceno de Villacastin (Segovia, Espana): geologia y paleontologia de micromamiferos7
- Le gisement Pleistocene moyen et superieur d'Artenac (Saint-Mary, Charent): premier bilan interdisciplinaire4
- "Oryctolagus cuniculus" dans quelques gisements quaternaires francais4
- Biochronological and palaeogeographical implications of a well-balanced late Middle Pleistocene fauna from Quisiana-Certosa (Capri, Southern Italy)2
- Animal remains from 17th century Carnide, Lisbon, Portugal.1
- Entre veados e ovelhas, um dromedário e uma baleia de permeio: arqueozoologia em Mértola desde a Idade do Ferro até ´Época Medieval1
- Estudo zooarqueológico dos restos recuperados no estabelecimento industrial romano do Creiro (Arrábida, Setúbal)1
- A fauna da Idade do Ferro e da Época Romana de Monte Molião (Lagos, Algarve): continuidades e rupturas na dieta alimentar1
- Das faunas às populações – Relexos islâmicos do Castelo de Paderne1
- The Paleofaunal Context1
- Dursunlu - a new Lower Pleistocene faunal and artifact-bearing locality in southern Anatolia.1
Each of the 47 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. 12 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 Oryctolagus cuniculus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- euqirneto
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- 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 itOryctolagus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)