Owl unseen for 150 years has been photographed in the wild for the first time

[Still Waters]

British scientists working in Ghana have rediscovered a "holy grail" giant owl that has lurked almost unseen in African rainforests for 150 years.

Shelley's Eagle Owl was spotted by Dr. Joseph Tobias, from the Department of Life Sciences (Silwood Park) at Imperial College London and leader of a UK-government funded field project studying biological impacts of agricultural development in Africa, and Dr. Robert Williams, a freelance ecologist from Somerset.

The bird was first described in 1872 from a specimen obtained from a local hunter in Ghana by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, curator of the bird collection at the Natural History Museum in London and founder of the British Ornithologists' Club.

There have been no confirmed sightings from Ghana since the 1870s, and very few glimpses elsewhere. The only photographs in existence were grainy images taken in 1975 of a captive individual behind bars at Antwerp Zoo and a pixelated blob from Congo in 2005 that is not certainly the right species.

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-owl-unseen-years-wild.html

[quiXilver]

One of science's great failings is their continued assumption of certainty.

Particularly when observations and insights reveal major shifts over time.

I remember a conversation with my Dad about his returning to study physics in his retirement.

"It's remarkable" I recall him saying.  "So much of what I learned in the 60's is now reversed or radically altered."

 

 

[jethrofloyd]

Such an giant owl could be what actually Mothman is/was.

[Hawken]

Animal species sometimes get rediscovered once declared extinct. The Pygmy Right Whale was rediscovered in 2012.

The Coelacanth thought to went extinct with the dinosaurs rediscovered in 1937.