birds from the past

Troodontid Owl

Owls can move their eyes though. It’s not voluntary like say a human moving our eyes. But they do have some range of motion. Intorsion and Extorsion of the eyes is basal to tetrapods.

Intorsion and extorsion of eyes isn’t really what people are referring to when asking whether an animal can move its eyes. I’m also not sure to what degree owls are even capable of that motion and I can’t find any literature discussing that.

Owls can move their eyes though. It’s not voluntary like say a human moving our eyes. But they do have some range of motion. Intorsion and Extorsion of the eyes is basal to tetrapods.

Not even paleontologists know what the first owl was. The best we have is a stem-owl Ogygoptynx, which coincidentally is the oldest raptorial crown bird. But that doesn’t mean it was the first owl just the oldest one we know of.

As it is right now, the oldest known raptorial Crown Bird is the stem-owl Ogygoptynx, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were the first raptorial birds. It has sometimes been proposed that all Telluravians evolved from a raptorial ancestor, which would mean the first raptorial bird would have been either a stem-telluravian or the last common ancestor of Telluraves.

We don’t know where the first Strigiformes came from because their fossil record is to incomplete. So far the oldest stem owl we have is Ogygoptynx from the Paleocene in North America, but we also have other basal Paleocene owls like Berruornis from Europe. Majority of Oligocine owl fossils discovered come from Europe.

Ornimegalonyx is possibly flightless owl.

Owl was a Tawny Owl in the books. Eurasian Eagle in live action movie.

Weirdly Ivory Bills are classified as critically endangered when all experts agree there is no reasonable evidence they still exist. Even stranger there’s people who still believe Passenger Pigeons, California Parakeets, and Dodos still exist.

I watched a documentary on that year the world shut down. And from what the researchers were saying whale watching has genuinely been found to be very stressful on whales and they are less capable of hearing and caring for their calf’s when surrounded by loud tourist boats.

If you want a blog that only posts cute pictures of owls go ahead and make it yourself. That was never the point of this blog.

Sadly majority of internet blogs for “cute owl” content involve a lot of owl abuse.

Currently they are the closest living relatives to the Terror Birds.