Tyto novaehollandiae
The Australian masked owl, also the Australasian masked owl or simply the masked owl, especially in Australia, is a barn owl of Southern New Guinea and the non-desert areas of Australia.

JJ Harrison · 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
- Australian masked-owlPBDB
- Sits inside
- TytoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Strigiformes
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Strigiformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Strigiformes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Strigiformes
- Mass
- 23.5 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Tyto novaehollandiae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
4 occurrences- Pleistocene75%
- Holocene25%
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.
Tyto novaehollandiae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Tyto novaehollandiae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
115 taxa- Aegotheles cristatus2 sites
- Antechinus flavipes2 sites
- Cercartetus nanus2 sites
- Coturnix2 sites
- Coturnix pectoralis2 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus2 sites
- Egernia2 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis2 sites
- Gymnorhina tibicen2 sites
- Isoodon obesulus2 sites
- Pedionomus torquatus2 sites
- Perameles gunnii2 sites
- Petaurus breviceps2 sites
- Pezoporus wallicus2 sites
- Platycercus2 sites
- Potorous platyops2 sites
- Procoptodon browneorum2 sites
- Procoptodon gilli2 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus2 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata2 sites
- Sminthopsis murina2 sites
- Sthenurus andersoni2 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus2 sites
- Tiliqua2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Tyto novaehollandiae, 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
4 references- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Pleistocene avian fossils from Pyramids Cave (M-89), eastern Victoria, Australia1
- The fossil avian assemblage from Weekes Cave (N-15), Nullarbor Plain, South Australia: corrections, additions and reinterpretation1
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. III. Birds (Aves)1
Each of the 4 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 Tyto novaehollandiae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tyto novaehollandiae 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 itTyto through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Stephens 1826)