Jamaican Caracara
Caracara tellustris
The Jamaican caracara (Caracara tellustris) is a prehistoric species of terrestrial bird in the falcon family, Falconidae. It was native to the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, where it likely inhabited dry forests in the island's south during the early Holocene. The species was described based on fossils discovered in the Skeleton Cave in the Jackson's Bay Cave system on the south coast of Portland Ridge.
From the article Jamaican caracara on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Caracara tellustris was a large bird with diminished wings, and was probably mostly terrestrial and perhaps flightless. It probably had a lifestyle similar to the secretary bird of Africa. It likely became extinct following Paleo-Indian colonization of the island during the Quaternary extinction event, but it may have survived until the European colonization of the island, after which habitat destruction and invasive species eradicated it before naturalists could describe it.
== References ==
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This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 774292.