The Madeiran scops owl (''Otus mauli'') is a small

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

owl that once inhabited the island of

Madeira Madeira ( ; ), officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira (), is an autonomous Regions of Portugal, autonomous region of Portugal. It is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Macaronesia, just under north of ...

in the

Macaronesia Macaronesia (; ) is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic, North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of North Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of list of islands in the Atlantic Oc ...

n archipelago off the north-west coast of Africa in the

North Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

History

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 preserve ...

bones of the owl were found in

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

sites on Madeira. It is the first extinct owl species to be described from Macaronesia. The describers suggest that the most likely cause of extinction was human settlement in the early 15th century, with its associated

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

and the introduction of alien species. Similar, though more fragmentary, remains were also found on the neighbouring island of Porto Santo, which may be of the same, or a closely related, species.

Description

The owl was similar in size to the Eurasian scops owl, though the leg bones were longer. Estimates of its body weight and

wing loading In aerodynamics, wing loading is the total weight of an aircraft or flying animal divided by the area of its wing. The stalling speed, takeoff speed and landing speed of an aircraft are partly determined by its wing loading. The faster an airc ...

suggest that it was largely ground-dwelling. The extinct São Miguel scops owl was similar but differs from the Madeiran species by the smaller size of many of its bones, especially the

ulna The ulna or ulnar bone (: ulnae or ulnas) is a long bone in the forearm stretching from the elbow to the wrist. It is on the same side of the forearm as the little finger, running parallel to the Radius (bone), radius, the forearm's other long ...

and

tibiotarsus The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia. A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae. These ...

References

mauli Birds of Madeira Fossil taxa described in 2012 Holocene extinctions Species made extinct by human activities Extinct birds of Atlantic islands Birds described in 2012 {{Strigiformes-stub