| Bahaman Barn Owl | |
|---|---|
 Reconstruction | |
| Information | |
| Range | Bahamas |
| Scientific Classification | |
| Kingdom | Animalia |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Anura |
| Order | Strigiformes |
| Family | Tyonidae |
| Genus | Tyto |
| Species | T. pollens |
| Conservation Status | |
 Extinct | |
The Bahaman Barn Owl (Tyto pollens) is an extinct giant barn owl which lived in the Bahamas during the last Ice Age.
The species was sympatric with the common barn owl (Tyto alba), 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 anoles (Anolis sagrei) to primarily rats and house mice today. These show that T. pollens had a diet which was largely based on the large rodent Geocapromys ingrahami, 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 has been suggested that the wetter climate which gave life to more forest like habitats pushed against the owls arid habitats, causing it to perish. The New Providence site is from some 20,000 years ago, give or take. T. pollens was closely related to T. ostologa from Hispaniola and T. noeli from Cuba. T. noeli was sympatric with an even larger species of barn owl, T. riveroi. 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 Bahamian pineyards of Andros Island in the Bahamas, 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".
References[]
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/543556-Tyto-pollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyto_pollens
Page 22 of the Vertebrates of Bahamas Report wich was edited by Storrs L. Olson