Caracara creightoni (Creighton's Caracara)

[another specialist]

Fossil Vertebrates from the Bahamas

Our re-examination of the supposedly extinct
fossil species of birds from the Bahamas considerably
alters previous ideas about the nature of
the Pleistocene avifauna. We have proposed the
following synonymies or changes in nomenclature:
Caiohierax quadratus = Buteo sp., Burhinus nanns
= Burhinus bistriatus nanus, Glaucidium dickinsom =
Athene cunicularia, Otus providentiae =• Athene cunicularia,
Bathoceleus hyphalus = Melanerpes superciliaris,
and Corvus wetmorei = Corvus nasicus. Thus, of the
nine new species described by Wetmore (1937b)
and Brodkorb (1959), only three represent taxa
that are certainly extinct at the species level: the
giant hawk Titanohierax gloveralleni, the giant barn
owl Tyto pollens, and the poorly known caracara
Polyborus creightoni.

si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/10088/6540/1/VZ_129-131_Bahamas_hi_res.pdf

[another specialist]

si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/10088/6540/1/VZ_129-131_Bahamas_hi_res.pdf

[another specialist]

Jun 12, 2008 19:03:12 GMT another specialist said:

Skull and mandible of the extinct Bahamas Caracara, Caracara creightoni, Sawmill Sink, Abaco, The Bahamas. Features that distinguish C. creightoni from the living C. cheriway include the larger, stouter mandible and rostrum as well as the larger nares.

www.pnas.org/cgi/content-nw/full/104/50/19897/F6

[another specialist]

Jun 12, 2008 19:04:09 GMT another specialist said:

We report Quaternary vertebrate and plant fossils from Sawmill
Sink, a ‘‘blue hole’’ (a water-filled sinkhole) on Great Abaco Island,
The Bahamas. The fossils are well preserved because of deposition
in anoxic salt water. Vertebrate fossils from peat on the talus cone
are radiocarbon-dated from
4,200 to 1,000 cal BP (Late Holocene).
The peat produced skeletons of two extinct species (tortoise
Chelonoidis undescribed sp. and Caracara Caracara creightoni) and
two extant species no longer in The Bahamas (Cuban crocodile,
Crocodylus rhombifer; and Cooper’s or Gundlach’s Hawk, Accipiter
cooperii or Accipiter gundlachii). A different, inorganic bone deposit
on a limestone ledge in Sawmill Sink is a Late Pleistocene owl
roost that features lizards (one species), snakes (three species),
birds (25 species), and bats (four species). The owl roost fauna
includes Rallus undescribed sp. (extinct; the first Bahamian flightless
rail) and four other locally extinct species of birds (Cooper’s/
Gundlach’s Hawk, A. cooperii/gundlachii; flicker Colaptes sp.; Cave
Swallow, Petrochelidon fulva; and Eastern Meadowlark, Sturnella
magna) and mammals (Bahamian hutia, Geocapromys ingrahami;
and a bat, Myotis sp.). The exquisitely preserved fossils from
Sawmill Sink suggest a grassy pineland as the dominant plant
community on Abaco in the Late Pleistocene, with a heavier
component of coppice (tropical dry evergreen forest) in the Late
Holocene. Important in its own right, this information also will help
biologists and government planners to develop conservation programs
in The Bahamas that consider long-term ecological and
cultural processes.

www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/104/50/19897?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=+Chelonoidis&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

[another specialist]

Dec 3, 2008 4:09:14 GMT another specialist said:

Jun 12, 2008 19:03:12 GMT another specialist said:

Skull and mandible of the extinct Bahamas Caracara, Caracara creightoni, Sawmill Sink, Abaco, The Bahamas. Features that distinguish C. creightoni from the living C. cheriway include the larger, stouter mandible and rostrum as well as the larger nares.

www.pnas.org/cgi/content-nw/full/104/50/19897/F6

The skull of a Bahama caracara, a bird of prey, found by diver Brian Kakuk and other skilled divers in a "blue hole" on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Credit: Nancy Albury, The Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation

Ancient Animal Treasures Found in Bahamas Sinkhole

By LiveScience Staff

posted: 07 December 2007 10:10 am ET

Fossil skeletons of an unusual land-roaming Cuban crocodile, a tortoise and 25 species of birds including a raptor known as a caracara are among the ancient treasures recently discovered in a sinkhole in the Bahamas.

Expert diver Brian Kakuk and his colleagues retrieved these fossils, along with the bones of a lizard, snakes, humans and bats, along the floor and walls of Sawmill Sink, a saltwater cavern of a type called a blue hole on Abaco Island.

The bones, ranging in age from 1,000 to 4,200 years old, were very well preserved in the deep, oxygen-free saltwater layer of the sinkhole, which is free of the bacteria and fungi that typically munch on bones. Divers also found fossilized leaves, twigs, flowers, fruits, seeds, pollen and spores.

David Steadman, a University of Florida ornithologist, said the fossils allowed him to reconstruct the ancient plant and animal communities of the Bahamas, as well as the impact that humans had when they first arrived there, which he detailed in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For instance, the terrestrial crocodile lived in the Bahamas until humans arrived, Steadman said.

"People tend to think of crocodiles as aquatic, and certainly most of them are," he said, "but in the Bahamas where there is no fresh water, the crocodile became a terrestrial predator."

The local climate and environmental conditions back when these animals lived were much like those of today. "The big difference is us," Steadman said. "When people got to the island, there was probably nothing easier to hunt than tortoises, so they cooked and ate them. And they got rid of crocodiles, because it's tough to have kids playing at the edge of the village where there are terrestrial crocodiles running around."

There are many blue holes on Abaco and other Bahamian islands, but this is the first to be the site of a sophisticated fossil excavation, Steadman said.

www.livescience.com/animals/071207-blue-hole.html

[surroundx]

Suárez, William and Olson, Storrs L. (2003). A new species of caracara (Milvago) from Quaternary asphalt deposits in Cuba, with notes on new material of Caracara creightoni Brodkorb (Aves: Falconidae). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 116(2): 301-307.

[surroundx]

Suárez, William and Olson, Storrs L. (2001). Further characterization of Caracara creightoni Brodkorb based on fossils from the Quaternary of Cuba (Aves: Falconidae). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 114(2): 501-508.

[surroundx]

Olson, Storrs L. (1976). A New Species of Milvago from Hispaniola, with Notes on Other Fossil Caracaras from the West Indies (Aves: Falconidae). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 88(33): 355-366.

[Sebbe]

The late Quaternary bird community of New Providence, Bahamas

Avian fossils give us a unique opportunity to assess changes through time in species diversity and distributions. We report a previously unstudied collection of ∼500 bird fossils from Banana Hole, New Providence Island, Commonwealth of The Bahamas. Based on comparisons with fossil sites of known age on Abaco, the species composition of the Banana Hole fossils suggests a late Pleistocene rather than Holocene age for the site, although this remains uncertain because of the inability to date the fossils radiometrically. The specimens represent 49 species (45 resident, 4 migratory), 25 of which had not been recorded before as fossils from Banana Hole. Among the 45 resident species, 4 are extinct and 17 others are extirpated from New Providence. Combining our data with those previously compiled from Banana Hole, 52 resident species of birds now are known from this site, among which 6 (12%) are extinct (a hawk [Buteo quadratus], eagle [Titanohierax gloveralleni], caracara [Caracara creightoni], barn-owl [Tyto pollens], thick-knee [Burhinus nanus], and snipe [Gallinago kakuki]), 18 (35%) are extirpated on New Providence but still live elsewhere, and 28 (54%) still occur on New Providence. The modern diversity and distribution of Bahamian birds reflects interrelated changes in climate, island size and isolation, and habitat during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition (15,000 to 9,000 yr ago) as well as species lost since human arrival ∼1,000 yr ago.

www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1642/AUK-17-185.1

[surroundx]

Orihuela, Johanset. (2019). An annotated list of late Quaternary extinct birds of Cuba. Ornitología Neotropical 30: 57-67.

[Melanie]

Jessica A. Oswald, Julia M. Allen, Kelsey E. Witt, Ryan A. Folk, Nancy A. Albury, David W. Steadman, Robert P. Guralnick. Ancient DNA from a 2,500-year-old Caribbean fossil places an extinct bird (Caracara creightoni) in a phylogenetic context. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. In Press, Journal Pre-proof, Available online 2 August 2019. doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2019.106576

Abstract:

Since the late Pleistocene humans have caused the extinction of species across our planet. Placing these extinct species in the tree of life with genetic data is essential to understand the ecological and evolutionary implications of these losses. While ancient DNA (aDNA) techniques have advanced rapidly in recent decades, aDNA from tropical species, especially birds, has been historically difficult to obtain, leaving a gap in our understanding of the extinction processes that have influenced current distributions and biodiversity. Here we report the recovery of a nearly complete mitochondrial genome from a 2,500 year old (late Holocene) bone of an extinct species of bird, Caracara creightoni, recovered from the anoxic saltwater environment of a blue hole in the Bahamas. Our results suggest that this extinct species is sister (1.6% sequence divergence) to a clade containing the extant C. cheriway and C. plancus. Caracara creightoni shared a common ancestor with these extant species during the Pleistocene (1.2-0.4 MYA) and presumably survived on Cuba when the Bahamas was mostly underwater during Quaternary interglacial intervals (periods of high sea levels). Tropical blue holes have been collecting animals for thousands of years and will continue to improve our understanding of faunal extinctions and distributions. In particular, new aDNA techniques combined with radiocarbon dating from Holocene Bahamian fossils will allow us to place other extinct (species-level loss) and extirpated (population-level loss) vertebrate taxa in improved phylogenetic, evolutionary, biogeographic, and temporal contexts.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790319301411?via%3Dihub

[surroundx]

Steadman, David W. and Franklin, Janet. (2020). Bird populations and species lost to Late Quaternary environmental change and human impact in the Bahamas. PNAS. doi/10.1073/pnas.2013368117 [Supplementary Information]

[Sebbe]

Suárez, W. (2022): Catalogue of Cuban fossil and subfossil birds.Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 142(1): 10-74.

bioone.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-british-ornithologists-club/volume-142/issue-1/bboc.v142i1.2022.a3/Catalogue-of-Cuban-fossil-and-subfossil-birds/10.25226/bboc.v142i1.2022.a3.full

[Sebbe]

Assessing the role of humans in Greater Antillean land vertebrate extinctions: new insights from Cuba.

The Caribbean archipelago is a hotspot of biodiversity characterized by a high rate of extinction. Recent studies have examined these losses, but the causes of the Antillean Late Quaternary vertebrate extinctions, and especially the role of humans, are still unclear. Previous results provide support for climate-related and human-induced extinctions, but often downplaying other complex bio-ecological factors that are difficult to model or to detect from the fossil and archaeological record. Here, we discuss Caribbean vertebrate extinctions and the potential role of humans derived from new and existing fossil and archaeological data from Cuba. Our results indicate that losses of Cuba’s native fauna occurred in waves: one during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, a second during the middle Holocene, and a third one during the last 2 ka, combining the arrival of agroceramists and later of Europeans. The coexistence of now-extinct species with multiple cultural groups in Cuba for over 4 ka implies that Cuban indigenous nonceramic cultures exerted far fewer extinction pressures to native fauna than the later agroceramists and Europeans that followed. This suggests a determinant value to increased technological sophistication and demographics as plausible effective extinction drivers. Beyond looking at dates of first human arrival alone, future studies should also consider cultural diversity with attention to different bio-ecological factors that influence these biodiversity changes.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.922237v3.full