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UF researchers find Caribbean was the original home of barn owl diversity

A study from the Florida Museum of Natural History determined that barn owls first reached the Caribbean after crossing the Atlantic from Eurasia sometime before five million years ago, then diversified there before spreading to the Galápagos and the American continents. Paleontologists have uncovered fossils of several now-extinct giant barn owl species in the region, including one that stood roughly a meter tall and may have survived until humans arrived in the mid- to late Holocene. Researchers believe these massive owls likely inspired local Caribbean folklore about a giant creature called the chickcharney.

Sources: UF News