Bahaman caracara
The Bahaman caracara, also known as Creighton's caracara, is an extinct bird of prey. It is known only from a few fossils discovered in the Bahamas and Cuba.
C. creightoni stood 58 cm tall, was short-winged and likely a poor flier. This species went extinct as a result of humans arriving on its home islands and wiping out the bird's prey species. A 2,500 year old C. creightoni femur from an Abaco Islands blue hole yielded a nearly complete mitochondrial genome. The DNA shows that the species was closely related to the northern crested caracara and the southern crested caracara. The three species last shared a common ancestor between 1.2 and 0.4 million years ago, during the Pleistocene.
