Flap from the dead
Ancient bird lost its ability to fly, died out, came ‘back to life’ ... then went flightless again!
Losing the ability to fly once is unfortunate. Twice could be considered careless.
But that’s what scientists believe happened to a bird called the rail.
As if that wasn’t enough, they also think it ‘came back from the dead’.
Fossil records show it landed on Aldabra coral island, in the indian ocean, hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The bird, similar to a moorhen, gradually lost the power to fly over time and evolved into the flightless rail.
it was wiped out when Aldabra became submerged 136,000 years ago, killing all its plants and animals. But after the waves receded, flying white-throated rails arrived and settled there once again.
it then took just 16,000 years for the birds to again lose their ability to fly in an environment where there was no need to hide in trees away from predators.
The flightless rails which now live on the island are the world’s last surviving colony. Dr Julian Hume, bird paleontologist at London’s natural History Museum, who led the research, 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. [it] epitomises the ability of these birds to successfully colonise isolated islands and evolve flightlessness on multiple occasions.’
Co-author David Martill, of Portsmouth University, said: ‘only on Aldabra is fossil evidence available that demonstrates the effects of changing sea levels on extinction and recolonisation events. Conditions were such – the most important being the absence of terrestrial predators and competing mammals, that a rail was able to evolve flightlessness independently on each occasion.’ The study was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean society.
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