Huahine Gull

The Huahine Gull (Larus utunui ) is an extinct gull species that hatched on the island of Huahine in the Society Islands. Their closest living relative is probably ( Larus novaehollandiae, synonym: Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae ), the Silver Gull. The specific epithet is derived from the Tahitian word utu ( " bird's beak " ) and nui ( "large" ).

Features

The Huahine Gull is of twelve bone ( ten different skeletal elements of two individuals ) are known which have been promoted in the archaeological deposit Faahia to days. The holotype includes a complete skull with associated beak. The paratypes consist of a square leg, a lower jaw, the third thoracic vertebrae, a sternum, a leg, a coracoid, three humeri, a femur and tibiotarsus. Eleven bones believed to originate from an adult bird, the distal end of the humerus of a juvenile bird.

System

After the Silver Gull was transferred to the genus Chroicocephalus 2005, would also have to Huahine Gull standing in this genus.

Extinction

The Huahine Gull is known only from subfossilem bone material from the Holocene. Judging from the stratigraphic deposits according to the nature 700-1200 AD could be extinct. Evidence of gulls on the Society Islands there were also in later records. So Carl Friedrich described fracture (1789-1857) 1853, the gull species Gavia Pomare, 1857 as Larus pomarre by Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte for Tahiti and 1859 as Larus Pomare of George Robert Gray for Tahiti and the Marquesas was listed. In his examination of the holotype from the Natural History Museum in Mainz between 1878 and 1896 Howard Saunders Larus looked pomarre as juvenile specimen of the Silver Gull Larus and Pomare as a synonym for the Maorimöwe (Larus bulleri, synonym: Chroicocephalus bulleri ). The entire museum collection of Carl Friedrich fraction was destroyed during the Second World War. However, a comparison of Bruch's drawing of the holotype of Gavia Pomare with Larus utunui also showed that the beak of Gavia Pomare is too small to consider both types to be identical.