Rallus cyanocavi

[Melanie]

We describe a new species of rail from the Sawmill Sink blue hole on Abaco Island in the northern Bahamas. Known from abundant, beautifully preserved Late Pleistocene fossils, Rallus cyanocavi sp. nov. was a medium-sized, flightless species that probably was endemic to the Little Bahama Bank, which is a carbonate platform surrounded by deeper water. We are uncertain whether R. cyanocavi survived into the Holocene, when higher sea levels transformed the Little Bahama Bank from a single large, Late Pleistocene island (ca. 12000 km2) to the scattering of smaller islands seen today, the largest of which is Abaco (1681 km2). Fossils of additional extinct, flightless species of Rallus probably await discovery on some of the 21 other carbonate banks that span the Bahamian Archipelago.

link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0031030113110130

[amongthylacines]

Of course it survived into the holocene. When will people get rid of the hippie/Rousseau notion that indians were 'noble savages' which lived 'in harmonie' with the creatures. The indians were -together with the Polynesians and aboriginals- the greatest killers of wildlife ever to have existed on this planet. And of course they wiped out this rail too.

[Melanie]

Well humans are one reason for the extinctions of species on islands. Another reason were the rising sea levels and climate change on the end of the Ice Age which caused island extinctions on St Helena, Cape Verde Islands, Canarian Islands, Bermuda, Barbados, Bahamas, and several Caribbean islands. Fact is that most remains were found in Pleistocene levels and almost nothing or only a few in Holocene levels.

[surroundx]

Full paper now available free online: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/museum-voices/bahamas-plants-animals/files/2014/05/PALJ1355.pdf

[surroundx]

Steadman, David W. and Franklin, Janet. (2020). Bird populations and species lost to Late Quaternary environmental change and human impact in the Bahamas. PNAS. doi/10.1073/pnas.2013368117 [Supplementary Information]