''Glaucidium ireneae'' is an extinct

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

pygmy owl Pygmy owls are members of the genus ''Glaucidium''. They belong to the typical owl family, Strigidae. The genus consists of 29 species distributed worldwide. These are mostly small owls, and some of the species are called "owlets". The genus in ...

that lived in what is now

Gauteng Gauteng ( , ; Sotho-Tswana languages, Sotho-Tswana for 'place of gold'; or ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts f ...

, South Africa during the

Early Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial epoch (geology), sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, representing the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently esti ...

epoch, about 2.5–1.38 million years ago.

Discovery and naming

In 2020, Italian ornithologist Marco Pavia published a study on fossilized bird remains found at the

Kromdraai fossil site Kromdraai (Afrikaans for "crooked turn") is a fossil-bearing breccia-filled cave located about east of the well-known South African hominid-bearing site of Sterkfontein and about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is situated within t ...

, South Africa, in which he reviewed over 800 specimens representing 25 different species from the site. Among these, Pavia noticed that some of the fossils kept in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...

represented a species of

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

unknown to science. After comparisons with the bones of modern owls, he determined that this new species belonged in the genus '' Glaucidium'', and gave it the

scientific name In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

''Glaucidium ireneae''. Pavia chose the specific name "''ireneae''" in honor of Italian ornithologist Irene Pellegrino, who specializes in the study of bird

phylogeography Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...

, especially that of owlets. Pellegrino supported Pavia in his research and is also the mother of their daughter Clara. A complete right

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bird bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) a ...

with the specimen number KW 7976 was designated as the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

specimen of this species, and three other specimens were chosen as

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype (biology), isotype ...

s. In addition, Pavia attributed four other bones to ''G. ireneae''. The discovery of this species marks the first definitive record of ''Glaucidium'' fossils in Africa, as an earlier diagnosis made in 1990 of a fossilized

skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

from

Taung Taung is a small town situated in the North West Province of South Africa. The name means ''place of the lion'' and was named after Tau, the King of the Barolong people. ''Tau'' is the Tswana word for lion. Taung skull fossil site In 1924, a sk ...

as that of a pearl-spotted owlet (''G. perlatum'') was only tentative. Further remains of ''G. ireneae'' were later reported in 2022, when Pavia teamed up with fellow researchers Aurore Val, Lisa Carrera and Christine M. Steninger to publish another study on fossil birds, with this one being on those at

Cooper's Cave Cooper's Cave is a series of fossil-bearing breccia filled cavities. The cave is located almost exactly between the well known South African hominid-bearing sites of Sterkfontein and Kromdraai and about northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa an ...

, a fossil-bearing site near Kromdraai. This study found that an owl

coracoid A coracoid is a paired bone which is part of the shoulder assembly in all vertebrates except therian mammals (marsupials and placentals). In therian mammals (including humans), a coracoid process is present as part of the scapula, but this is n ...

bone had been uncovered in the Cooper's D locality of the cave, and was nearly identical to a coracoid from Kromdraai that was designated as a paratype of ''G. ireneae''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q132745143 ireneae Fossil taxa described in 2020 Birds described in 2020 Pleistocene birds of Africa

Discovery and naming

See also

References