Nesophontes, The Island Murderer and Hidden Treasures of the Caribbean

The cutest "murderer" you'll ever see: Nesophontes, an extinct genus of Caribbean mammal that was an evolutionary mystery — until now. Credit: Natural History Museum, London UK. As every pirate knows, the Caribbean is rife with buried treasure. Sometimes it's gold, sometimes it's rum and sometimes it's DNA hidden in owl regurgitations. By poking around some 750 year-old owl pellets, researchers were able to obtain enough DNA from an extinct animal — the owl's prey — to tell the whole evolutionary tale of a creature known as [cue ominous music] ... the Island Murderer. The genus Nesophontes got its name from the Greek nesos (island) and phontes (murderer or, perhaps more accurately, killer) but it's hard to imagine these little guys — sometimes inaccurately called island shrews — as stone cold killahs...unless you were an insect. For eons, members of the genus made short work of insects throughout the Caribbean and were then in turn devoured by predators such as owls. This Circle of Life was disrupted with the arrival of Europeans and, more specifically, the rats, cats and other invasive species that hitched a ride across the Atlantic with them. Beginning in the 16th century, Nesophontes numbers declined precipitiously. By the early 20th century at the latest — many researchers contend the end came much earlier — all the Nesophontes were gone.