Asio madagascariensis
The Madagascar owl, also known as the Madagascan owl or Madagascar long-eared owl, is a medium-sized owl endemic to the island of Madagascar. It is sometimes considered to be conspecific with the long-eared owl.

Francesco Veronesi · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- Madagascar long-eared owlPBDB
- Sits inside
- AsioPBDB
- 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.
4 occurrences of Asio madagascariensis 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- Pleistocene96%
- Holocene5%
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.
Asio madagascariensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Asio madagascariensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
37 taxa- Aepyornis hildebrandti2 sites
- Aldabrachelys2 sites
- Alopochen sirabensis2 sites
- Anas erythrorhyncha2 sites
- Ardea alba2 sites
- Hippopotamus2 sites
- Mullerornis2 sites
- Voay robustus2 sites
- Accipiter madagascariensis1 site
- Aepyornis1 site
- Anhinga melanogaster1 site
- Athene superciliaris1 site
- Buteo brachypterus1 site
- Coracopsis vasa1 site
- Corvus albus1 site
- Coua cristata1 site
- Coua cursor1 site
- Coua gigas1 site
- Coua ruficeps1 site
- Eurystomus glaucurus1 site
- Leptosomus discolor1 site
- Lophotibis cristata1 site
- Milvus migrans aegyptius1 site
- Monias benschi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Asio madagascariensis, 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
2 references- A new late Pleistocene subfossil site (Tsaramody, Sambaina basin, central Madagascar) with implications for the chronology of habitat and megafaunal community change on Madagascar’s Central Highlands2
- Bird fossils from Ankilitelo Cave: inference about Holocene environmental changes in southwestern Madagascar2
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Asio madagascariensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Francesco Veronesi
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Asio madagascariensis 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 itAsio through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Smith 1834)