Millions of years ago, one owl species moved off the night shift, shaping a lifestyle for some modern birds of prey.
But what would cause these finely tuned hunters to switch their schedules? A study published today intraces an “evolutionary reversal” in one of the largest living groups of owls and presents “the first fossil evidence for diurnal behavior” among the birds, according to the abstract.
The research focuses on a well-preserved skeleton from northern China’s Ma Liushu Formation. Measuring about 12 inches from head to toe,is estimated to be 6 to 10 million years old and is related to modern diurnal species such as burrowing owls and Northern hawk owls. Paleontologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the size and shape of the extinct bird’s eye, cranial, and lower leg bones and compared them to measurements from modern relatives. The authors found that the morphological features of the fossil jibed closely with day-hunting species from the group Surniini, which includes several North American owls, including the short-eared owl and ferruginous pygmy-owl.
In contrast with other ancient owls, whose senses of sight, sound, and even smell were suited to the darkness,seemed to be better adapted for daytime, with large eyes and less-tubular ears that match the traits in grassland owls today. As such, the extinct owl’s environment might have been the main driver behind its behavioral shift: The study goes so far to attribute the night-to-day switch to “steppe habitat expansion and climate cooling in the late Miocene.
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