Oraristrix brea

Oraristrix brea, commonly known as the La Brea owl, is an extinct species of owl reported from the Upper Pleistocene asphalt deposits at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. It was first described by Hildegarde Howard in 1933 as Strix brea and was subsequently assigned to the separate genus Oraristrix by Campbell and Bocheński in 2010. The species has also been recorded from Upper Pleistocene asphalt deposits of Carpinteria, California. Its relatively long legs in proportion to its wingspan suggest that O. brea was more terrestrial in its habits than modern North American species of Bubo and Strix.

Oraristrix brea

Apokryltaros · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
Also called
Brea owlPBDB
Sits inside
OraristrixPBDB
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 199 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 15 of 15 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 15 occurrences213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences710 ka0 Mya

15 occurrences of Oraristrix brea 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

15 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.

Oraristrix brea and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Oraristrix brea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

265 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Oraristrix brea, 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

3 references

Each of the 15 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Oraristrix brea

Credit
Apokryltaros
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Oraristrix brea was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itOraristrix through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Howard 1933)