Tytonidae

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Tyto

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Phodilus

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Barn owls (family Tytonidae) are one of the two generally accepted families of owls, the other being the typical owls, Strigidae. They are medium to large sized owls with large heads and characteristic heart-shaped faces. They have long strong legs with powerful talons. The barn owls comprise two sub-families: the Tytoninae or Tyto owls (including the Common Barn Owl) and the Phodilinae or bay-owls.

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The fossil record of the barn owls goes back to the Eocene, with the family eventually losing ground to the true owls after the radiation of rodents and owls during the Neogene epoch . Two sub-families are only known from the fossil record, the Necrobyinae and the Selenornithinae.

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The barn owls are a wide ranging family, absent only from northern North America, Saharan Africa and large areas of Asia. They live in a wide range of habitats from deserts to forests, and from temperate latitudes to the tropics. The majority of the 16 recognized species of barn owls are poorly known, some, like the Madagascar Red Owl, have barely been seen or studied since their discovery, in contrast to the Common Barn Owl, which is one of the best known owl species in the world. However, some sub-species of the Common Barn Owl possible deserve to be a species, and are very poorly known.

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5 species of barn owl are threatened, and some island species have gone extinct (like the species Tyto letocarti, known from the fossil record of New Caledonia). The barn owls are mostly nocturnal, and generally non-migratory, living in pairs or singly.

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Strigidae: REDIRECT True owl...

Talon: Talon may refer to several different things:...

Fossil record: Ever since recorded history began, and probably before, people have found pieces of rock and other hard material with indentations from the remains of dead organisms. These are called fossils, and the totality of these artifacts and their placement in rock formations is referred to as the fossil rec...