Tongatapu rail
Tongatapu rail Temporal range: Late Holocene
| |
---|---|
Watercolour painting by Georg Forster | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Gruiformes |
Family: | Rallidae |
Genus: | Gallirallus |
Species: | †G. hypoleucus
|
Binomial name | |
†Gallirallus hypoleucus | |
Synonyms | |
|
The Tongatapu rail (Gallirallus hypoleucus) was a species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was apparently native to the island of Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga, in Polynesia in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is known only from brief descriptions of a specimen, now lost, collected from Tongatapu in 1777 in the course of James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific, and from a contemporary illustration by Georg Forster.[1]
References[]
- ^ Medway, D.G. (2010). "The Tongatapu rail Gallirallus hypoleucus (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867) – an extinct species resurrected?" (PDF). Notornis. 57 (4): 199–203.
Categories:
- IUCN Red List extinct species
- Gallirallus
- Birds of Tonga
- Extinct birds of Oceania
- Birds described in 1867
- Bird extinctions since 1500
- Gruiformes stubs