The carrion crow (Corvus corone) is a passerine bird of the family Corvidae, native to western Europe and the eastern Palearctic. Along with the hooded crow (Corvus cornix), the carrion crow occupies a similar ecological niche in Eurasia to the American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) 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.

The carrion crow was one of the many species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, and it still bears its original name of Corvus corone. The binomial name is derived from the Latin corvus, "raven", and Greek κορώνη korōnē, "crow".

The hooded crow (Corvus cornix), formerly regarded as a subspecies, has been split off as a separate species, and some discussion has arisen as to whether the eastern carrion crow (C. c. orientalis) is distinct enough to warrant a separate specific status; the two taxa are well separated, as they could have evolved independently in the wetter, maritime regions at the opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass.

The plumage of the carrion crow is black with a green or purple sheen, much greener than the gloss of the rook (Corvus frugilegus). The bill, legs, and feet are also black. It can be distinguished from the common raven by its size, around 48–52 cm (19–20 in) in length, as compared to an average of 63 cm (25 in) for ravens, and from the hooded crow by its black plumage. The carrion crow has a wingspan of 84–100 cm (33–39 in) and weighs 400–600 g (14–21 oz).

Juvenile carrion crows can be identified by their brownish plumage and blue eyes, both of which darken to black and brown as the crow grows older.

The carrion crow (C. corone) and hooded crow (C. cornix), including the former's slightly larger allied subspecies C. c. orientalis, are two very closely related species; the geographic distributions of both forms of carrion crow across Europe are illustrated in the accompanying diagram. This distribution might have resulted from the glaciation cycles during the Pleistocene, which caused the parent population to split into isolates, which subsequently re-expanded their ranges when the climate warmed, causing secondary contact.

Poelstra and coworkers sequenced almost the entire genomes of both species in populations at varying distances from the contact zone to find that the two species were genetically identical, both in their DNA and in its expression (in the form of mRNA), except for the lack of expression of a small portion (<0.28%) of the genome (situated on avian chromosome 18) in the hooded crow, which imparts the lighter plumage colouration on its torso. Thus, the two species can viably hybridize, and occasionally do so at the contact zone, but the all-black carrion crows on the one side of the contact zone mate almost exclusively with other all-black carrion crows, while the same occurs among the hooded crows on the other side of the contact zone.

Clearly, then, only the outward appearance of the two species inhibits hybridization. The authors attribute this to assortative mating (rather than to ecological selection), the advantage of which is not clear, and it would lead to the rapid appearance of streams of new lineages, and possibly even species, through mutual attraction between mutants. Unnikrishnan and Akhila propose, instead, that koinophilia is a more parsimonious explanation for the resistance to hybridization across the contact zone, despite the absence of physiological, anatomical, or genetic barriers to such hybridization. The carrion crow is also found in the mountains, forests, and cities of Japan.