tags: Caracara creightoni, fossils, birds, ornithology, Image of the Day
The fossil skull of an extinct bird of prey, Caracara creightoni, preserved in an ancient sink-hole in the Bahamas. Several thousand years old, the fossils owe their exquisite preservation to immersion in peat. The bird is a relative of the crested caracara of Central and North America.
GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist has written a blog about science since 4 August 2004 (the early years are archived 




















