44 R. W. Shufeldt 



This specimen agrees in all particulars with the type specimen now 

 in the collection of the American IVIuseum of Natural History. 



Cat. No. 833 (PI. XV, Fig. 154, a-i), Peabody Museum, Yale University. Dry 

 Creek, Wyoming. ? Eocene (Bridger). LaMothe and Chew, collectors. 



Minerva anfiqua is here represented by twenty-four (24) fragments 

 of fossil bones; they are all from the same individual (adult), and 

 constitute the collection through the means of which I was enabled 

 to ascertain that they belonged to a huge owl and not to an eagle. 



Nine of these fragments are shown on Plate XV (Fig. 154, a-i). 



Fig. 154g presents a specimen of the characteristic claw or ungual 

 joint of this owl, and it agrees in every detail with the type specimen 

 and the one shown in Figure 151 of this Plate. Other specimens 

 depart from it slightly, but only in the matter of size; but in this speci- 

 men it may readily be attributed to either the variations due to age 

 or to sex. It will be remembered that in nearly all of our Strigidce 

 the females are larger than the males, frequently possessing larger 

 talons and, as a consequence, larger osseous phalanges. 



That this claw belonged to 'hallux,' and that the ungual osseous 

 claws of the three anterior toes were without the characteristic dorsal, 

 backward-projecting process, is proven by the fact that, in the mate- 

 rial now being examined, and all belonging to the same individual, 

 there are three- (3) other osseous ungual phalanges which, from their 

 var^ang sizes, are, without the slightest doubt, those belonging to 

 the three anterior toes. (Fig. 154, a, c and/.) The anterior portions 

 of all these ungual phalanges are unfortunately broken off and were 

 not recovered. However, more perfect specimens are seen in Figures 

 148 and 149 of this Plate. 



The hasal phalanx of hallux is here shown in d, the dorsal aspect 

 being presented. Owing to distortion from pressure, it does not now 

 perfectly articulate with the claw g; but further on specimens will 

 be shown where it does do so (Figs. 133, 134). 



There is also in this lot a nearly perfect proximal portion of the left 

 carpo-metacarpus (Fig. 154, b, palmar aspect); and upon comparmg 

 the characters it presents with those of the corresponding bone in the 

 skeleton of Bubo virginianus (No. 18753, Coll. U. S. Nat. Mus.), it 

 becomes clear that not only did this fossil belong, in life, to a big owl , 

 but to one having skeletal characters that were in some respects 

 bubonine ones, or at least resembled them; Minerva antiqua, however, 

 was by no means a Bubo. 



