London, Aug 14 (Inditop.com) A seabird thought to have been driven to extinction by hungry European sailors in the late 18th century has been rediscovered, in the laboratory. It turns out the ‘extinct’ species is actually a sub-species of a bird very much alive.
Tammy Steeves, Marie Hale and Richard Holdaway are part of a team of scientists from across New Zealand and Australia who have used an innovative approach to resolve the taxonomic status of the “extinct” Tasman booby (Sula tasmani).
It is the first study of its kind to report the rediscovery of an extinct bird using classical paleontological data combined with ancient and modern DNA data.
“Many re-discoveries of ‘extinct’ birds are the result of an intensive search in the field, but ours is a little different — we rediscovered our bird in the laboratory,” said Steeves.
“What was once considered to be an extinct species, the Tasman booby, turns out to be a subspecies of a living species, the masked booby (Sula dactylatra fullagari). And now these charismatic sea birds have a new name – Sula dactylatra tasmani.”
Masked boobies are large colonial sea birds that breed on oceanic islands throughout the tropics and subtropics. In addition to having longer wings than birds elsewhere, the masked boobies breeding on three remote island groups in the North Tasman Sea have sepia, not yellow, eyes.
Future research will explore how these long-winged, sepia-eyed birds came to be so different from their short-winged, yellow-eyed counterparts.
These findings have been recently published online in Biology Letters.
