Meet The Bird That Refuses To Die
Fossils reveal an extinct species of flightless bird returned from the dead by recolonizing its former island home and evolving back into existence twice in less than 20,000 years
White-throated rail, Dryolimnas cuvieri, or Cuvier’s rail is a species of bird in the family Rallidae. It is found in the Comoros, Madagascar, Mayotte, and the Seychelles. This individual was photographed in Bemanevika, a remote protected area in northern Madagascar that is home to a number of endangered species. (Credit: Charles Davies / CC BY-NC 2.0)
Fossils reveal that an extinct species of flightless bird returned from the dead by re-colonizing its former island home and evolving back into existence twice in less than 20,000 years. The white-throated rail from Madagascar in the south-western Indian Ocean colonized the tiny Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean and became flightless before the island and everything on it was swallowed by rising seas 136,000 years ago.
“Aldabra went under the sea and everything was gone,” Natural History Museum avian paleontologist and lead author of the study, Julian Hume, explained in email. “There was an almost complete turn over in the fauna. Everything including an endemic crocodile and a duck, as well as the tortoise and the rail went extinct. Yet, as the Aldabra rail still lives on today, something must have happened for it to have returned.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Words About Birds to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.