Saint Helena Swamphen

The Saint Helena Rail ( Aphanocrex Podarces ) was a large flightless Rail from the island of St. Helena. She died from the early 16th century.

Features

The Saint Helena Rail was quite large, reaching nearly the size of New Zealand Wekaralle ( Gallirallus australis). In contrast to Wekaralle Unfortunately, she was slimmer. The fact that St. Helena was free from predators until the 16th century, it lost its ability to fly. But your wings were obviously better than that of the Rails of Ascension ( Mundia elpenor ) and Inaccessible ( Atlantisia rogersi ). They also had strong toes with long claws, with which she was well adapted to climbing and descending the steep valley slopes flutter.

Way of life

The Saint Helena Rail feeding on the eggs and chicks may be of the country and coastal birds and snails.

Extinction

Like other ground- nesting birds St. Helena, such as the St. Helena Crake and the St Helena Hoopoe it was probably a victim of entrained mammals such as cats and rats.

System

When the American ornithologist Alexander Wetmore 1963, the kind based on subfossil bones that were found in the Prosperous Bay on St. Helena, described, he classified them into the new genus Aphanocrex. However, the American paleontologist Storrs Olson thought she was cognate with the Atlantis Rail ( Atlantisia rogersi ) of Inaccessible and the Ascension Rail and synonymisierte 1973 Aphanocrex genus with the genus Atlantisia. Recently, many scientists assume, however, that have the Rails of St. Helena, Ascension Island and Inaccessible independently developed and there is no closer relationship between the St Helena Rail and the Atlantis Rail. Therefore one has put them back into the genus Aphanocrex.