St. Helena Shearwater
| St. Helena Shearwater | ||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||
| Pleistocene | ||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Puffinus pacificoides | ||||||||||
| Olson , 1975 | ||||||||||
The Saint Helena Shearwater ( Puffinus pacificoides ) is an extinct seabird from the kind of Shearwater ( Puffinus ). He brooded on the South Atlantic -Insel St. Helena . The type epithet pacificoides refers to its relationship to the recent wedge-tailed shearwater ( Puffinus pacificus ).
features
The holotype is a nearly complete left femur that was unearthed in 1971 by Storrs Lovejoy Olson in the Aeolian sand-lime stone near Sugarloaf Hill on St. Helena. It has a total length of 32.2 mm. Its color is white with dark wave drawings. As early as the early 1960s, Philip Ashmole had collected seven fragments of leg elements of an undescribed shearwater species, which were later assigned to this species. The material labeled as paratypes includes femur and fragments of tibiotarsi , tarsometatarsi , humerus , ells , carpometacarpi , raven bones , beak bones , mandible, and toe bones . A total of 73 bones are known. The St. Helena Shearwater was a medium-sized bird from the species group of the gray-coat shearwater ( Puffinus bulleri ). It was larger and more robust than the wedge-tailed shearwater.
die out
The St. Helena shearwater died out naturally around 14,000 years ago due to the rapid rise in sea level from 135 to 80 m below today's sea level in the Young Pleistocene . The water temperature was probably about 2 ° C below the maximum in the Holocene . The trade winds coming from the southeast were also stronger than today.
literature
- Lewis, Colin A .: The Late Glacial and Holocene avifauna of the island of St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean . (PDF) In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa . 63, No. 2, 2008, pp. 128-144. doi : 10.1080 / 00359190809519217 .
- Olson, Storrs L .: Paleornithology of St Helena Island, south Atlantic Ocean . (PDF) In: Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology . 23, 1975, pp. 1-49.