Rodrigues star
| Rodrigues star | ||||||||||||
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HH Slaters bone material from Necropsar rodericanus |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Necropsar | ||||||||||||
| HH Slater , A. Günther & A. Newton , 1879 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Necropsar rodericanus | ||||||||||||
| A. Günther & A. Newton, 1879 |
The Rodrigues Star ( Necropsar rodericanus ) is a hypothetical species, the existence of which is based on an old travelogue, some subfossil bones and a museum specimen from Liverpool, which has since been identified as an albinotic specimen of the still existing gray quivering thrush ( Cinclocerthia gutturalis ).
In 1726 there was a travel report in which the French researcher Julien Tafforet described this species under the name Testudophaga bicolor as follows: “Its occurrence was limited to the island of Ilet au Mát (a small island near the coast of Rodrigues ) . It is said to have reached the size of a blackbird , had predominantly white plumage, a dark tail, dark wings, yellow legs and a yellow beak. His diet is said to have consisted of turtle eggs. "
In 1874 Henry Horrocks Slater found subfossil bones on Rodrigues, which served as the basis for the first scientific description by Albert Günther and Alfred Newton in 1879. Günther and Newton considered the Rodrigues star to be a close relative of the Hopf star ( Fregilupus varius ) and classified it in the genus Fregilupus .
Finally, a unique bellows from the World Museum Liverpool became known. It was described in 1898 by Henry Ogg Forbes under the name Necropsar leguati and illustrated by the Dutch bird artist John Gerrard Keulemans . This example was acquired by Jules Verreaux in 1850 by Edward Smith Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby , and has been in the Liverpool Museum ever since. In April 2000, however, it was found on the basis of DNA analyzes that this bellows can be clearly assigned to an albinotic specimen of the gray trembling thrush and that the alleged existence of the Rodrigues star, according to the American paleontologist Storrs Lovejoy Olson, was simply based on a mix-up and incorrect labeling. (Olson et al., Bull. BOC 125: 31, 2003) In contrast to Olson, the IUCN still assumes that this bird is authentic, as Tafforet's report and Slater's bones still provide sufficient evidence for its existence this bird holds.
literature
- Greenway, James (1967): Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World, Dover Publications Inc. New York, ISBN 0-486-21869-4
- Errol Fuller (2000). "Extinct Birds", ISBN 0-8160-1833-2
- David Day (1981). "The Doomsday Book of Animals", Ebury Press, London, ISBN 0-670-27987-0
Web links
- Necropsar rodericanus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed January 31 of 2009.