"to carry off large primates; today, lemurs still retain a fear of aerial predators such as these. Another might be the perception of ratites retaining neotenic features and thus being mistaken for enormous chicks of a presumably more massive bird. The ancient Malagasy name for the bird is vorompatra, meaning ""bird of the Ampatres"". The Ampatres are today known as the Androy region of southern Madagascar. Like the ostrich, rhea, cassowary, emu, kiwi and extinct moa, ""Mullerornis"" and ""Aepyornis"" were ratites; they could not fly, and their breast bones had no keel. Because Madagascar and Africa separated before the ratite"
"elephant birds, a family of endemic giant ratites, became extinct in the 17th century or earlier, most probably due to human hunting of adult birds and poaching of their large eggs for food. Numerous giant lemur species vanished with the arrival of human settlers to the island, while others became extinct over the course of the centuries as a growing human population put greater pressures on lemur habitats and, among some populations, increased the rate of lemur hunting for food. A July 2012 assessment found that the exploitation of natural resources since 2009 has had dire consequences for the island's"
"Elephant Island Elephant Island is an ice-covered mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean. Its name was given by early explorers sighting elephant seals on its shores. The island is situated north-northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, west-southwest of South Georgia, south of the Falkland Islands, and southeast of Cape Horn. It is within the Antarctic claims of Argentina, Chile and the UK. Brazil has a shelter on the island, Goeldi, supporting the work of up to six researchers each during the summer and another"
"Cyprus dwarf elephant The Cyprus dwarf elephant (""Palaeoloxodon cypriotes"") is an extinct species that inhabited the island of Cyprus during the Pleistocene until around 11,000 years BC. Remains comprise 44 molars, found in the north of the island, seven molars discovered in the south-east, a single measurable femur and a single tusk among very sparse additional bone and tusk fragments. The molars support derivation from the Straight-tusked elephant ""(Palaeoloxodon antiquus""), that inhabited Europe since 780,000 years ago, who reached the island presumably during a Pleistocene glacial maximum when low sea levels opened terrestrial corridors between Cyprus and Asia Minor. During"
"pedal phalanges. The oceanic eclectus parrot became extinct on Tonga during the early settlement 3000 years ago, presumably due to human-caused factors. On Vava'u, it may have survived into historic times because among the drawings which were created in 1793 during Alessandro Malaspina's Pacific expedition, there is one sketch which appears to portray an Oceanic eclectus parrot. Oceanic eclectus parrot The oceanic eclectus parrot (""Eclectus infectus"") is an extinct parrot species which occurred on Tonga, Vanuatu and possibly on Fiji. The only living relative in the genus is the eclectus parrot (""Eclectus roratus""), which has proportionally larger wings than the"
"was the chance discovery of a small population on an almost inaccessible rock, Jacquemart Island. Thus there is not much information about it and it remains one of the least known birds in the world. Snipe are extinct on the mainland of New Zealand but continue to survive on several subantarctic islands. A naturalist landed on Campbell island in 1840 and whilst there found no birds to be present: all endemic land birds had been destroyed by rats from shipwrecks in the area (in the mid-19th century). By 2001 the rats on Campbell Island had been eradicated (the largest eradication"
"Elephant Point Elephant Point is a small predominantly ice-free promontory projecting 2 km into Bransfield Strait at the south extremity of the west half of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. The point forms the southwest side of the entrance to Kavarna Cove, and is surmounted by Rotch Dome on the north. Ice-free surface area . The area was visited by early 19th century sealers. The point is named after the Elephant seal species. The southernmost point of the feature is located at which is 12.1 km east-southeast of Nikopol Point, 3.95 km southeast of Clark Nunatak, 3.08"
"London. The BBC television personality David Attenborough owns an almost complete fossilized eggshell, which he pieced together from fragments he collected on a visit to Madagascar. It is widely believed that the extinction of ""Aepyornis"" was the result of human activity. The birds were initially widespread, occurring from the northern to the southern tip of Madagascar. One theory states that humans hunted the elephant birds to extinction in a very short time for such a large landmass (the blitzkrieg hypothesis). There is indeed evidence that they were killed. However, their eggs may have been the most vulnerable point in their"
"honeycreeper. The bird was filmed in 1923 during the Tanager Expedition. Shortly after, Laysan was battered by a strong storm, and later attempts at finding any remaining Laysan honeycreeper failed. Other birds also inhabited the island, including the Laysan millerbird, the Laysan rail, the Laysan duck, and the Laysan finch. Of these, only the finch and the duck remain extant. Laysan honeycreeper The Laysan honeycreeper or Laysan apapane (""Himatione fraithii"") is an extinct bird species that was endemic to the island of Laysan in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The species was described by the British ornithologist Walter Rothschild in 1892"
"Viti Levu giant pigeon The Viti Levu giant pigeon (""Natunaornis gigoura"") is an extinct flightless pigeon of Viti Levu, the largest island in Fiji. It was only slightly smaller than the dodo (""Raphus cucullatus"") and Rodrigues solitaire (""Pezophaps solitaria"") and is the first giant, flightless pigeon to be discovered on a Pacific island. Remains of this species were discovered in Quaternary (probably Holocene) deposits in October 1998. Its first description was published in 2001. The holotype is in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The generic name """"Natunaornis"""" is named after Natuna, the oldest chief"
"Oceanic eclectus parrot The oceanic eclectus parrot (""Eclectus infectus"") is an extinct parrot species which occurred on Tonga, Vanuatu and possibly on Fiji. The only living relative in the genus is the eclectus parrot (""Eclectus roratus""), which has proportionally larger wings than the oceanic eclectus parrot. The fossil material unearthed in November 1989 in Late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits on 'Eua, Lifuka, 'Uiha and Vanuatu and described in 2006 by David William Steadman include a complete femur, five radii, a quadrate bone, a mandible, a coracoid, two sterna, two humeri, two ulnae, two tibiotarsi, a carpometacarpus, a tarsometatarsus, and three"
"Ascension crake The Ascension crake (""Mundia elpenor"") is an extinct flightless bird that previously lived on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was declared extinct by Groombridge in 1994; BirdLife International confirmed this in 2000 and 2004. It is a member of the family Rallidae. The bird was endemic to Ascension Island. Numerous subfossil bones of the bird have been found; Peter Mundy made a sketch of it in 1656. It most likely lived in the near-desert areas of the island and primarily ate sooty tern (""Sterna fuscata"") eggs. It is probable that it became extinct after rats"
"km southwest of Bond Point and 13.2 km west-southwest of Hannah Point. British mapping in 1821 and 1968, Spanish in 1991, and Bulgarian in 2005 and 2009. Elephant Point Elephant Point is a small predominantly ice-free promontory projecting 2 km into Bransfield Strait at the south extremity of the west half of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. The point forms the southwest side of the entrance to Kavarna Cove, and is surmounted by Rotch Dome on the north. Ice-free surface area . The area was visited by early 19th century sealers. The point is named after the"
"made from their blubber, and the population may have fallen as low as 20. In 1874 American whaleman Charles Melville Scammon recorded in ""Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of America"", that ""the elephant seal...known to the Old Californians as ""Elefante marino"" had a geographical distribution from Cape Lazaro (about 1/4 of the way up the Baja peninsula) in the south to Point Reyes in the north"". They were thought to be extinct in 1884 until a remnant population of eight individuals was discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1892 by a Smithsonian expedition, who promptly killed seven of the eight"
"Henderson archaic pigeon The Henderson archaic pigeon (""Bountyphaps obsoleta""), or Henderson Island archaic pigeon, is an extinct bird in the Columbidae, or pigeon family. It was described in 2008 as a new genus and species from subfossil remains found on Henderson Island in the Pitcairn Group of south-eastern Polynesia. The genus was named for both the ship HMS ""Bounty"" with which, following the famous mutiny, Europeans first discovered the Pitcairn Islands, and for the former bounty the bird provided as food; with the Greek ""phaps"" (wild pigeon). The specific epithet comes from the Latin adjective for ""extinct"" or ""forgotten about""."
"Kangaroo Island emu The Kangaroo Island emu or dwarf emu (""Dromaius novaehollandiae baudinianus"") is an extinct subspecies of emu. It was restricted to Kangaroo Island, South Australia, which was known as Ile Decrés by the members of the Baudin expedition. It differed from the mainland emu mainly in its smaller size. The species became extinct by about 1827. It was discovered in 1802 by Matthew Flinders and reported to be quite common around Nepean Bay. The first bones of the subspecies were discovered in 1903 at The Brecknells, sandhills on the west side of Cape Gantheaume. Initially there was confusion"
"the brush fires, the overgrazing by goats and rabbits and the predation by rats and feral cats. The last specimen was shot for a collection by Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1895 and it was regarded as extinct by 1900. Museums specimens can be seen in the Auckland War Memorial Museum, in the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Berlin, Chicago, Christchurch, in the Natural History Museum, in the World Museum Liverpool, in the American Museum of Natural History, in Paris, in Pittsburgh and in Stockholm. Chatham fernbird The Chatham fernbird (""Poodytes rufescens"") is an extinct bird species endemic to Pitt Island"
"the remains of these and the other birds are scattered throughout various museums in Europe today. The logbooks of the expedition did not specify from which island each captured bird originated, or even that they were taxonomically distinct, so their status remained unclear until more than a century later. Hunting pressure and fires started by early settlers on King Island likely drove the wild population to extinction by 1805. The captive specimens in Paris both died in 1822 and are believed to have been the last of their kind. There was long confusion regarding the taxonomic status and geographic origin"
"Vega Island in the Antarctic in 1992, Vegavis iaai which was an early relative of ducks and geese in 2005. It is thought to be the only species of modern bird to have lived at the time of the dinosaurs. She studied the voice organ (syrinx) of a fossil originally found in 1992. The findings by her and other researchers was published in the science journal Nature. Fossils of the ancient bird Inkayacu were first discovered in 2008 on the Pacific coast of Ica, Peru. A nearly complete skeleton was uncovered in the Paracas National Reserve by a team led"
"Dodo The dodo (""Raphus cucullatus"") is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest genetic relative was the also extinct Rodrigues solitaire, the two forming the subfamily Raphinae of the family of pigeons and doves. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but this is now thought to have been confusion based on the Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos. Subfossil remains show the dodo was"
"on the nearby islands of Gardiner and Champion). When Charles Darwin visited the island in 1835, he found no sign of its native tortoise and assumed that whalers, pirates, and human settlers had wiped them out. Since about 1850, no tortoises have been found on the island (except for one or two introduced animals kept as pets by the locals), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified the Floreana tortoise (""Chelonoidis elephantopus"" sometimes called ""Chelonoidis nigra"") as extinct. However, it may be that there are pure Floreana tortoises living on other islands in the archipelago. Isla Floreana is"
"encountered and exterminated the elephant birds of Madagascar, and the Maori did likewise to the moa of New Zealand. The giant ratites of Madagascar and New Zealand had evolved with little or no exposure to mammalian predators, and were unable to cope with predation by humans; many other oceanic species met the same fate (as apparently had the Australian dromornithids earlier). Worldwide, most giant birds became extinct by the end of the 18th century and most surviving species are now endangered. However, the co-existence between elephant birds and human beings appears to have been longer than previously thought. Today, ratites"
"on Laysan during 1923, probably mainly because no habitat for nesting was left in sufficient quantity to maintain the population. The last rail was seen on Eastern Island in Midway in June 1944. Laysan rail The Laysan rail or Laysan crake (""Porzana palmeri"") was a flightless bird endemic to the Northwest Hawaiian Island of Laysan. This small island was and still is an important seabird colony, and sustained a number of endemic species, including the rail. It became extinct due to habitat loss by domestic rabbits, and ultimately World War II. Its scientific name honours Henry Palmer, who collected in"
"Laysan honeycreeper The Laysan honeycreeper or Laysan apapane (""Himatione fraithii"") is an extinct bird species that was endemic to the island of Laysan in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The species was described by the British ornithologist Walter Rothschild in 1892 under its current binomial name. In a review published in 1950, the American ornithologist Dean Amadon treated the Laysan honeycreeper as a subspecies of the ʻApapane and adopted the trinomial name ""Himatione sanguinea freethii"". Subsequent publications followed this lead. In 2015 the North American Classification Committee (NACC) of the American Ornithologists' Union decided to promote the extinct honeycreeper to the"
"elephant in a cave in the Kyrenia hills of Cyprus. The species is also known under its synonym ""Elephas cypriotes"". Finds of whole or partial skeletons of this elephant are very rare. The first recorded find was by Dorothea Bate in a cave in the Kyrenia hills of Cyprus in 1902, described in a paper for the Royal Society in 1903 and in a later paper for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1905. Human interference leading to the extinction to the Cyprus dwarf elephant has been a controversial topic over the last decade. A rising theory"
"until 5,600 years ago and on Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago. After its extinction, humans continued using its ivory as a raw material, a tradition that continues today. It has been proposed the species could be recreated through various means, but none of these are yet feasible. Remains of various extinct elephants were known by Europeans for centuries, but were generally interpreted, based on biblical accounts, as the remains of legendary creatures such as behemoths or giants. It was also theorised that they were remains of modern elephants that had been brought to Europe during the Roman Republic, for"
"cause of extinction. It was noted by James Bond that the bird was seemingly unafraid of gunshots, making it particularly vulnerable to hunting. Bond attributed the bird's extinction to the large number of pigeon hunters who travelled to Mona Island. Deforestation of the island may also have played a role. Three specimens of the bird still exist. Beyond the one in the Field Museum, the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris each possess one skin. Although it is believed the species may also have existed on Puerto Rico, all the existing specimens were"
"dictates that evil spirits inhabit it which prevent its being populated. Sarpan (""Île aux Serpents""), the largest of the islands, is also home to an extremely rare subspecies of Phaeton, a marine bird found only on the Îles de la Madeleine and the Galápagos Islands. Îles de la Madeleine (Senegal) The Iles de la Madeleine lie west of Dakar in Senegal. The islands are uninhabited. The main island is Sarpan, known for its Stone Age tool finds. The islands are also known for their birds, fish and plant life.The cliffs are steep, and had been carved by the sea over"
"extinct. Its inability to fly and the island's geographic isolation, combined with the bird's inquisitiveness and lack of fear of humans, made it an easy victim of over-hunting. It is now known that the extinction event occurred specifically between 1942 and 1945. This was a direct result of the presence of thousands of starving Japanese troops stranded on the island after a U.S. blockade of the island took place as a direct result of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Wake Island in December 1941, in addition combined with the inevitable habitat destruction resulting from military altercations and extensive aerial"
"Huahine gull The Huahine gull (""Chroicocephalus utunui""), also known as the Society Islands gull, is an extinct bird, a species of gull of which subfossil bones were found at the Fa'ahia archeological site on Huahine, in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. The site is an early Polynesian occupation site dating to between 700 CE and 1200 CE, containing, as well as anthropogenic material, the remains of many species of birds now either globally or locally extinct, that were killed for their flesh, bones or feathers. The gull was described (as ""Larus utunui"") from 12 bones from two individual birds."
"been eradicated, and the Laysan millerbird had gone extinct. In 1923, the Tanager Expedition arrived, and the rabbits were exterminated at long last. The bird population had been reduced to about a tenth of its former size. Three endemic taxa had become extinct, as had numerous other plant species. Two other endemic species, the Laysan duck and the Laysan finch, survive to this day, but are endangered. Like most of the Northwestern Hawaiian islands, Laysan is currently uninhabited. It is protected by the Hawaiian Natural Life Act of 1961 and cared for by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who"
"the Canary Islands, Spain. It may formerly have occurred on Gran Canaria, as bones similar to those of a laurel pigeon have been found and there is a possible sight record from the late 19th century. It was common in the past, but disappeared from many areas owing to clearance of laurel forest in the islands. More recently the rate of laurel forest clearance has been slowed or stopped. Population estimates for the species are 1,160-1,315 birds in 1980, 6,000 individuals in 2001, and 5,000-20,000 most recently. Whether these figures reveal genuine population increases is unclear, but the area of"
"were introduced to the island in the 18th century, but it may have survived until the introduction of feral cats in 1815. The bird was regarded by Storrs Olson as a relative of ""Atlantisia rogersi"", but recent analysis (Bourne et al., 2003) has shown that the differences between the two are greater than previously appreciated. The new genus ""Mundia"" (named after the discoverer Peter Mundy) was created in 2003. Ascension crake The Ascension crake (""Mundia elpenor"") is an extinct flightless bird that previously lived on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was declared extinct by Groombridge in 1994;"