Athene cretensis

The Cretan owl is an extinct species of owl that belongs to the family Strigidae. It lived during the Middle and Late Pleistocene epoch being endemic to the islands of Crete and Armathia in the eastern Mediterranean. It’s mainland ancestor was probably the little owl.

Athene cretensis

Apokryltaros at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AthenePBDB
Diet
carnivore, insectivorePBDB, for Strigidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Strigidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Strigiformes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Strigidae

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 12 of 13 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 13 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

13 occurrences of Athene cretensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

13 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Athene cretensis and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Athene cretensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

74 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Athene cretensis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 13 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Athene cretensis

Credit
Apokryltaros at English Wikipedia
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Athene cretensis was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAthene through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Weesie 1982