An Extinct Species of Scops Owl Has Been Discovered in Madeira

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2012) — An international team of scientists, including some from Majorca and the Canary Islands, have described a new type of fossil scops owl, the first extinct bird on the archipelago of Madeira (Portugal). Otus mauli, which was also the first nocturnal bird of prey described in the area, lived on land and became extinct as a result of humans arriving on the island. 

Twenty years ago, the German researcher Harald Pieper discovered fossil remains of a small nocturnal bird of prey in Madeira, which, until now, had not been studied in depth. The international team of palaeontologists has shown that the remains belong to a previously unknown extinct species of scops owl, which they have called Otus mauli.

"It has long legs and wings slightly shorter than the continental European scops owl from which it derives" Josep Antoni Alcover, one of the authors of the study and researcher at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), a mixed centre of the university of the Balearic Islands and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), said.

The result of the analysis of the proportions of the remains found, which has been published in the journal Zootaxa, reveals that Otus mauli could be a land inhabiting species that ate invertebrates and "occasionally lizards or birds."

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120323134533.htm