Oxyura vantetsi is an extinct New Zealand species of duck. It was onlydescribed as an independent speciesin 2005 by Trevor H. Worthy . Oxyura vantetsi was closely related to the Australian rowing duck ( Oxyura australis ), but its bones are a tenth smaller than those of their Australian relatives. The holotype was found in 1967 at Lake Poukawa in the Hawke's Bay region on the North Island of New Zealand. The scientific name honors the late English ornithologist Gerard Frederick van Tets (1929–1995), who was the first to recognize in 1983 that the species was related to the rowing ducks . For a long time the existing bone material could not be described because it was not labeled. It was not until 2004 that Trevor H. Worthy of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa succeededin identifying19 bones of the species Oxyura vantetsi from the 13,000 fossil remains of water birds found at Lake Poukawa. Oxyura vantetsi was probablyexterminatedby the Māori in the 16th century.
literature
Tennyson, A. & Martinson, P .: Extinct birds of New Zealand. Te Papa Press, 2006, ISBN 0-909010-218
Worthy, TH (2005): A new species of Oxyura (Aves: Anatidae) from the New Zealand Holocene. Longmann Symposium. - Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 51: 255-272.
