The Jamaican caracara (''Caracara tellustris'') is a

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

species of terrestrial

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the

falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene. Adult falcons ...

family,

Falconidae The falcons and caracaras are around 60 species of diurnal birds of prey that make up the family Falconidae (representing all extant species in the order Falconiformes). The family is divided into three subfamilies, Herpetotherinae, which incl ...

. It was native to the island of

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispan ...

in the Caribbean, where it probably inhabited

dry forests The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest is a habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature and is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive ...

in the island's south during the early

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

. This species was described based on

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s discovered in the Skeleton Cave in the Jackson's Bay Cave system on the south coast of Portland Ridge.

Description

''Caracara tellustris'' was large and had diminished wings; it was probably mostly

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

and may have been

flightless Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites ( ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is ...

. It probably had a lifestyle similar to that of the

secretary bird The secretarybird or secretary bird (''Sagittarius serpentarius'') is a large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Endemic to Africa, it is usually found in the open grasslands and savanna of the sub-Saharan region. John Frederick Miller described ...

of Africa. It likely became extinct following Paleo-Indian colonization of the island during the

Quaternary extinction event The Quaternary period (from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present) has seen the extinctions of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which have resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity and the extinction of key ecolog ...

, but it may have survived up to European colonization of the island, after which

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

and

invasive species An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species adv ...

wiped it out before it could be described by naturalists.

References

Jamaican caracara The Jamaican caracara (''Caracara tellustris'') is a prehistoric species of terrestrial bird in the falcon family, Falconidae. It was native to the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, where it probably inhabited dry forests in the island's sout ...

Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Holocene extinctions Extinct animals of Jamaica Extinct flightless birds Extinct birds of the Caribbean

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