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Tyto Gigantea
''Tyto gigantea'' is an extinct barn owl from what is now Gargano Gargano (, Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance arˈgæːnə is a historical and geographical sub-region in the province of Foggia, Apulia, southeast Italy, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming ..., Italy, dating back to the late Miocene. From its remains, ''T. gigantea'' is suggested to have been as large as or larger than the Eurasian eagle-owl (''Bubo bubo''). This species seems to have lived at the same time as the closely related owl, ''Tyto robusta''. That would represent a single lineage of owls adapting to the largest size of their prey on the island, such as the great Erinaceidae, erinaceomorph of Gargano, ''Deinogalerix'', and rodents.Mlíkovský, J. (1998)A new barn owl (Aves: Strigidae) from the early Miocene of Germany, with comments on the fossil history of the Tytoninae ''Journal für Ornithologie'', 139(3), 247-261. References Tyto M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regionally defined boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, the Arabian Peninsula collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and allowing a faunal interchange to occur between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans into Eurasia. During the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
