Saint Helena rail
| Saint Helena rail | |
|---|---|
| |
| Drawing of the skull, with the missing beak speculatively restored with dashed lines. | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gruiformes |
| Family: | Rallidae |
| Genus: | †Aphanocrex Wetmore, 1963 |
| Species: | †A. podarces
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| Binomial name | |
| †Aphanocrex podarces Wetmore, 1963
| |
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| Location of Saint Helena | |
| Synonyms | |
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The Saint Helena rail (Aphanocrex podarces) was a large flightless rail from Saint Helena. It became extinct in the early 16th century.
When American ornithologist
Storrs Olson synonymised this genus with the genus Atlantisia, the other representative of which was the Inaccessible Island rail
(Atlantisia rogersi). While Olson had considered it as congener of the Inaccessible Island rail, other scientists regarded it not even as a close relative and so it is retained in Aphanocrex.
The Saint Helena rail was relatively large and reached almost the size of the New Zealand
pelagic bird species and on snails. Like other ground-nesting birds such as the Saint Helena crake and the Saint Helena hoopoe it became a victim of alien predators like cats and rats which were brought to Saint Helena
after 1502.
Storrs Olson suggested that Aphanocrex may have fed on food dropped by visiting seabirds.[2]
References
- ^ BirdLife International (2012). "Atlantisia podarces". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
- ^ OLSON, S.L. 1973. Evolution of the rails of the South Atlantic Islands (Aves Rallidae). Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 152: iii + 53 pp
Further reading
- Storrs L. Olson, Paleornithology of St Helena Island, south Atlantic Ocean, Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 23 (1975)