''Tyto pollens'' is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
giant
barn owl
The barn owl (''Tyto alba'') is the most widely distributed species of owl in the world and one of the most widespread of all species of birds, being found almost everywhere except for the polar and desert regions, Asia north of the Himalaya ...
which lived in the Bahamas during the last Ice Age.
Description
It is only known from the partial remains of three individuals which have been collected on the islands of
Little Exuma
Little is a synonym for small size and may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Little'' (album), 1990 debut album of Vic Chesnutt
* ''Little'' (film), 2019 American comedy film
*The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John P ...
(the site was misidentified as on
Great Exuma
Exuma is a district of The Bahamas, consisting of over 365 islands, also called cays.
The largest of the cays is Great Exuma, which is 37 mi (60 km) in length and joined to another island, Little Exuma, by a small bridge. The capita ...
in the original literature) and
New Providence
New Providence is the most populous island in the Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. It is the location of the national capital city of Nassau, whose boundaries are coincident with the island; it had a population of 246 ...
.
Alexander Wetmore
Frank Alexander Wetmore (June 18, 1886 – December 7, 1978) was an American ornithologist and avian paleontologist. He was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Early life and education
The son of a Country Physician, Frank Al ...
initially described the species from fossils of a single individual from Little Exuma site which are the
holotype
A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...
: a complete coracoid, a proximal end of the ulna, a major metacarpal lacking the proximal end and the complete femur.
[ The femur is 81.2mm in length. Both palaeontological sites are from before the arrival of humans (the Lucayans) to the islands. 18,000 years ago, the sea level was 120 metres lower than today and the Bahamas existed as at least five major islands, with a land mass over 10 times the modern size. Both dig sites would have been part of the same island. The fossil assembly of the period indicates that the Bahamas were much drier and more arid in this period, and instead of the pine forests covering the islands today, it was covered by an extensive savannah or prairie.]
Ecology
The species was sympatric
In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species sh ...
with the American barn owl (''Tyto furcata
The American barn owl (''Tyto furcata'') is usually considered a subspecies group and together with the western barn owl group, the eastern barn owl group, and sometimes the Andaman masked owl, make up the barn owl, cosmopolitan in range. The ba ...
''), which was much more common on the Bahamas at the time than it is today, and also had a radically different diet than today, having shifted from a diet of primarily brown anole
The brown anole (''Anolis sagrei''), also known commonly as the Cuban brown anole, or De la Sagra's anole, is a species of lizard in the family Dactyloidae. The species is native to Cuba and the Bahamas. It has been widely introduced elsewhere, ...
s (''Anolis sagrei'') to primarily rats and house mice
The house mouse (''Mus musculus'') is a small mammal of the order Rodentia, characteristically having a pointed snout, large rounded ears, and a long and almost hairless tail. It is one of the most abundant species of the genus ''Mus''. Although ...
today. The New Providence site contained only two partial skeletons, but also copious amounts of owl pellets. These show that ''T. pollens'' had a diet which was largely based on the large rodent ''Geocapromys ingrahami
The Bahamian hutia or Ingraham's hutia (''Geocapromys ingrahami'') is a small, furry, rat-like mammal found only in the Bahamas. About the size of a rabbit, it lives in burrows in forests or shrubland, emerging at night to feed on leaves, fruit, ...
'', which at present only survives on a single small arid island, but which appears to have once been the only land mammal of the Bahamas and extremely common throughout most of the islands at the time. It is thought that the changing wetter climate allowed a new habitat of Bahamian pineyards
The Bahamian pineyards are a tropical and subtropical coniferous forest ecoregion in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Geography
The Bahamian pineyards cover an area of . Pineyards are found on four of the northern islands in the Ba ...
(Caribbean pine
The Caribbean pine (''Pinus caribaea'') is a hard pine species native to Central America and the northern West Indies (in Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands). It belongs to subsection '' Australes'' in subgenus ''Pinus''. It ...
forests) to spread over the islands, which drove this main prey of ''T. pollens'' to be extirpated from all but remnant arid habitat islands, and hunting by the Lucayans may have possibly also driven the species to extinction. The Little Exuma site is from a layer not far under a darker, more organic layer showing the arrival of the Lucayans, but it was never properly dated. The New Providence site is from some 20,000 years ago, give or take. ''T. pollens'' was closely related to ''T. ostologa'' from Hispaniola
Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...
and ''T. noeli'' from Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
. ''T. noeli'' was sympatric with an even larger species of barn owl, ''T. riveroi''.[
]
Distribution and habitat
In a 1995 report Bruce G. Marcot, a forester from the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Oregon, claimed without evidence that it lived in the old-growth
An old-growth forestalso termed primary forest, virgin forest, late seral forest, primeval forest, or first-growth forestis a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance, and thereby exhibits unique ecological featur ...
Bahamian pineyards of Andros Island
Andros Island is an archipelago within the Bahamas, the largest of the Bahamian Islands. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consis ...
in the Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
, although the fossil assemblage indicates it was a species from the prairies and no fossils are known from Andros Island.[ Marcot claimed that the owl became recently extinct due to "early human settlers". He invented a new ]common name
In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often contrast ...
for the taxon: the Andros Island barn owl. He also claimed it was flightless and 1 meter tall,[ although it was certainly not flightless nor so large.][ One estimate posited the body mass of ''T. pollens'' as perhaps .][Weidensaul, S. (2015). ''Owls of North America and the Caribbean''. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.]
The chickcharney
Marcot also claimed ''T. pollens'' likely inspired the legend of the ''chickcharney
The chickcharney (also known as the chickcharnie or chickcharnee) is a legendary creature in the folklore of Andros Island in the Bahama Islands. It is said to live in the forests, is furry or feathered, and about tall, with an ugly appearance r ...
,'' a mischievous goblin. According to legend, the Chickcharney has three-toed feet and can turn its head all the way around.[
]
See also
*''Grallistrix
The stilt-owls (''Grallistrix'') is an extinct genus of true owls which contains four species, all of which lived on the Hawaiian Islands.
''Grallistrix'' can be loosely translated as "owl on stilts". The genus received this name due to the l ...
''
*''Ornimegalonyx
The Cuban giant owl or giant cursorial owl (''Ornimegalonyx'') is an extinct genus of giant owl that measured in height. It is closely related to the many species of living owls of the genus '' Strix''.Feduccia, Alan (1996) "The Origin and Evolut ...
''
*Late Quaternary prehistoric birds
Late Quaternary prehistoric birds are avian taxa that became extinct during the Late Quaternary – the Holocene or Late Pleistocene – and before recorded history, or more precisely, before they could be studied alive by ornithol ...
*List of fossil birds
Birds evolved from certain feathered theropod dinosaurs, and there is no real dividing line between birds and non-avian dinosaurs except that some of the former survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event while the latter did not. For ...
References
Tyto
Bird extinctions since 1500
Birds of the Bahamas
Birds described in 1937
Extinct birds of the Caribbean
Taxa named by Alexander Wetmore
{{strigiformes-stub