Figure 9. A in A New Genus for the Extinct Late Pleistocene Owl Strix brea Howard (Aves: Strigiformes) from Rancho La Brea, California

Figure 9. A comparison of wing length vs. leg lengths in Bubo bubo, B. africanus, B. virginianus, Strix nebulosa, S. occidentalis, S. varia, S. aluco, and Oraristrix brea. In (A) the leg length includes the femur, whereas in (B) only the tibiotarsus and the tarsometatarsus are included in the leg length because the femur is held in a near horizontal position and it correlates with the weight of the bird, not necessarily its stature. In both plots it can be seen that O. brea had relatively longer legs in comparison to species of similar wing length. However, the difference might also result from the small number of fossil specimens and/or the fact that the fossil O. brea is a composite of an unknown number of individuals. We cannot exclude the possibility, however remote, that the leg elements all, or primarily, belong to large females whereas the wing bones are all from smaller males. For the modern species, each symbol represents one specimen, whereas for Oraristrix brea and the fossil Bubo virginianus from Rancho La Brea the symbol stands for the arithmetic means of all fossil specimens of particular elements. For O. brea the number of fossil specimens available for calculating the means was as follows: humerus, 4; ulna, 1; carpometacarpus, 7; femur, 5; tibiotarsus, 5; tarsometatarsus, 15. For fossil B. virginianus, the number of specimens available for calculating the means was as follows: humerus, 6; ulna, 6; carpometacarpus, 34; femur, 41; tibiotarsus, 18; tarsometatarsus, 68.