Extinct bird 'came back from dead' 30,000 years after flood

The white-throated rail successfully colonised the atoll twice
J Sharp/P
Megan White14 May 2019

An extinct bird managed is said to have 'come back from the dead' 30,000 years after it was made extinct.

The white-throated rail first disappeared from the Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles 136,000 years ago.

The species had evolved to become flightless because it had no predators on the small island cluster, but was wiped out during a major flood.

But scientists have discovered fossils of the birds from when sea levels fell around 100,000 years ago and found the atoll had been recolonised by the rails.

The fossils were from birds tens of thousands of years apart
PA

Researchers from the Natural History Museum and University of Portsmouth said they have “no other example” of other birds becoming extinct before successfully recolonising in the way rails did.

The last colony of the birds is still found on Madagascar.

Lead researcher Dr Julian Hume, avian paleontologist and Research Associate at the Natural History Museum, said: “These unique fossils provide irrefutable evidence that a member of the rail family colonised the atoll, most likely from Madagascar, and became flightless independently on each occasion.

"Fossil evidence presented here is unique for rails, and epitomises the ability of these birds to successfully colonise isolated islands and evolve flightlessness on multiple occasions."

Co-author of the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, Professor David Martill, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, said: ‘We know of no other example in rails, or of birds in general, that demonstrates this phenomenon so evidently.

“Only on Aldabra, which has the oldest palaeontological record of any oceanic island within the Indian Ocean region, is fossil evidence available that demonstrates the effects of changing sea levels on extinction and recolonisation events.

“Conditions were such on Aldabra, the most important being the absence of terrestrial predators and competing mammals, that a rail was able to evolve flightlessness independently on each occasion.”