Latest Extinct birds Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Sexual dimorphism, in which male and females of the same species differ significantly in appearance, is fairly common among birds. Typically, the male of the species either towers over the female or is equipped with elaborate plumage, as in the case of the peacock. However, for New Zealand’s extinct, flightless giant moa, the roles were reversed, with the female often weighing three times as much as her male suitors. According...
Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online It isn’t something that anyone expects to find in an Easter Egg hunt this coming weekend, but a sub-fossilized egg from an extinct type of bird could reach a lofty price when it goes to auction. Christie’s Auction House in London is putting an egg of an extinct elephant bird up for auction. The egg, which is 309cm in length and 21cm in diameter, would be hard to confuse with the average chicken egg, as it is roughly 100 times...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online When scientists first discovered fossils of the Eocene bird Diatryma in the mid 19th century, they portrayed the 7-foot avian as a fierce predator, which caught on with science writers and popular culture. However, a recent discovery has suggested that this flightless giant was a gentle herbivore and not a flesh-eating terror as previously suggested. According to a report in the journal Paleontology, a set of 50...
Using one of the largest DNA data sets for a group of birds and employing next-generation sequencing methods, Smithsonian scientists and collaborators have determined the evolutionary family tree for one of the most strikingly diverse and endangered bird families in the world, the Hawaiian honeycreepers. Not only have the researchers determined the types of finches that the honeycreeper family originally evolved from, but they have also linked the timing of that rapid evolution to the...
With bits of DNA extracted from century-old museum specimens, researchers have found a place for the extinct passenger pigeon in the family tree of pigeons and doves, identifying for the first time this unique bird's closest living avian relatives.The new analysis, which appears this month in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, reveals that the passenger pigeon was most closely related to other North and South American pigeons, and not to the mourning dove, as was once...
A group of five endemic and recently extinct Hawaiian songbird species were historically classified as "honeyeaters" due to striking similarities to birds of the same name in Australia and neighboring islands in the South Pacific. Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, however, have recently discovered that the Hawaiian birds, commonly known as the oo's and the kioea, share no close relationship with the other honeyeaters and in fact represent a new and distinct family of birds...
By Ed Stoddard JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Scientists beware: Don't count your extinct bird species because one of them may hatch. Several supposedly extinct birds have recently been "rediscovered," raising hopes that others not seen for ages may still be taking to the skies. "The real message of rediscoveries is that we didn't look hard enough in the first place," said Nigel Collar of UK-based conservation group BirdLife International. "We think we've explored the planet when we haven't....
JOHANNESBURG -- Scientists beware: don't count your extinct bird species because one of them may hatch.Several supposedly extinct birds have recently been "rediscovered," raising hopes that others not seen for ages may still be taking to the skies."The real message of rediscoveries is that we didn't look hard enough in the first place," said Nigel Collar of UK-based conservation group BirdLife International."We think we've explored the planet when we haven't. We have...
Latest Extinct birds Reference Libraries
The Kioea (Chaetoptila angustipluma), is a species of Hawaiian Honey-eater that became extinct around 1859. It was in danger of extinction even before the discovery of Hawaii by Europeans. Even the native people are mostly unfamiliar with this species. This bird was not utilized for its feathers, nor was it used in legends or chants of the native people. Four specimens do exist in museums, however it is unknown what led to its extinction. The Kioea was a 13 inch long bird with a long,...
The Black Mamo (Drepanis funerea), was discovered in 1893 in the Pelekuna Valley, on the island of Molokai, where it was once found in the high forests of the peaks. There is fossil evidence of this species on the island of Maui. It was shot down many times for collections because of what the bird looked like. Being eight inches long from tail tip to the end of is bill, it was a large bird, but was not as large as the former species of Mamo, the Hawaiian Mamo. It was shadowy black with...
The Auckland Islands Merganser (Mergus australis), was a typical merganser which is now extinct. This bird was first collected when a French expedition visited the Auckland Islands in 1840. Subsequent fossil discoveries suggest that this merganser was previously resident on the South Island and Stewart Island in New Zealand. There have also been fossils found of related subspecies on the Chatham Islands. This duck was similar in size to the Red-breasted Merganser. The adult male had a...
The Choiseul Crested Pigeon, Microgoura meeki) is an allegedly extinct pigeon which was only known on the Solomon island of Choiseul in the Pacific. This species was one of the most remarkable pigeon species in the world. It had a length of approximately 11.8 inches, which resembles the size of a chicken. On the top of the head was a dark bluish crest similar to the Crowned Pigeons of Papua New Guinea. The forehead and the front of the face are black, the rest of the head sparsely pinnate...
