Florida Museum of Natural History
Key points
- Barn owls dispersed to North America from Eurasia between the Pliocene and early Pleistocene epochs, less than 5 million years ago, likely by crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
- A new study conducted by scientists at the Florida Museum of Natural History shows that barn owls initially arrived and diversified in the Caribbean, where paleontologists have found fossils of several giant species in this group that are now extinct.
- From the Caribbean, barn owls dispersed to the Galápagos Islands. Afterward, Caribbean barn owls made their way onto the North and South American continents.
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