| Scolopax brachycarpa Temporal range: Late Holocene | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Scolopacidae |
| Genus: | Scolopax |
| Species: | †S. brachycarpa |
| Binomial name | |
| †Scolopax brachycarpa Steadman & Takano, 2015 | |
Scolopax brachycarpa, is an extinct species of woodcock in the family Scolopacidae that was endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
It belonged to an insular radiation of woodcocks that may have once existed throughout the Greater Antilles; another extinct member of this radiation is Scolopax anthonyi from Puerto Rico. Both birds shared more osteological characteristics with the Eurasian woodcock (S. rusticola) than the American woodcock (S. minor).
It was described from Trouing Jean Paul, a late Holocene limestone cave in Haiti, and was the fourth most common species in the fossil assemblage collected from it. The fossils collected date to between 650 and 1600 years ago, which is over 5 millennia after the first Paleo-Indian presence on Hispaniola. Thus, S. brachycarpa may have survived the Amerindian colonization of Hispaniola and possibly even into the European colonization of the island, as scientific knowledge of the island's avifauna did not rigorously start until the 19th century, at which point S. brachycarpa may have been already wiped out by invasive species, such as cats, dogs, and mongooses. [1]
Sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil. Different lengths of bills enable different species to feed in the same habitat, particularly on the coast, without direct competition for food.
The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of wading birds in the genus Scolopax. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name is first recorded in about 1050. According to the Harleian Miscellany, a group of woodcocks is called a "fall".
The curlews are a group of nine species of birds in the genus Numenius, characterised by their long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. The English name is imitative of the Eurasian curlew's call, but may have been influenced by the Old French corliu, "messenger", from courir , "to run". It was first recorded in 1377 in Langland's Piers Plowman "Fissch to lyue in þe flode..Þe corlue by kynde of þe eyre". In Europe "curlew" usually refers to one species, the Eurasian curlew.
The Eurasian woodcock is a medium-small wading bird found in temperate and subarctic Eurasia. It has cryptic camouflage to suit its woodland habitat, with reddish-brown upperparts and buff-coloured underparts. Its eyes are set far back on its head to give it 360-degree vision and it probes in the ground for food with its long, sensitive bill, making it vulnerable to cold weather when the ground remains frozen.
The Moluccan woodcock, also known as the Obi woodcock, is a lowland wader endemic to Indonesia. Its distribution is restricted to Obi and possibly Bacan, two small islands in North Maluku. It is a medium-sized bird, measuring 32-40 centimetres, and is the largest of the woodcocks. Its conservation status is vulnerable due to severe habitat destruction on Obi.
Leiocephalidae, also known as the curlytail lizards or curly-tailed lizards, is a family of iguanian lizards restricted to the West Indies. One of the defining features of these lizards is that their tail often curls over. They were previously regarded as members of the subfamily Leiocephalinae within the family Tropiduridae. There are presently 30 known species, all in the genus Leiocephalus.
Gallinago is a genus of birds in the wader family Scolopacidae, containing 18 species.
The Bukidnon woodcock, or Philippine woodcock is a medium-sized wader. It was only described as new to science as recently as 2001, although the initial specimens had been collected on Luzon in the 1960s, these were originally misidentified as Eurasian woodcock specimens. It was not until the bird was heard calling in 1993, and new specimens obtained on Mindanao in 1995, that it was realised that the species was new. It is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN.
Acratocnus is an extinct genus of ground sloths that were found on Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.
The Antillean cave rail, also known as DeBooy's rail, is an extinct species of flightless bird which occurred on Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands.
Xenotrichini is a tribe of extinct primates, which lived on the Greater Antilles as recently as the 16th century.
The mammalian order Pilosa, which includes the sloths and anteaters, includes various species from the Caribbean region. Many species of sloths are known from the Greater Antilles, all of which became extinct over the last millennia, but some sloths and anteaters survive on islands closer to the mainland.
A unique and diverse albeit phylogenetically restricted mammal fauna is known from the Caribbean region. The region—specifically, all islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Barbados, which are not in the Caribbean Sea but biogeographically belong to the same Caribbean bioregion—has been home to several families found nowhere else, but much of this diversity is now extinct.
Chelonoidis is a genus of turtles in the tortoise family erected by Leopold Fitzinger in 1835. They are found in South America and the Galápagos Islands, and formerly had a wide distribution in the West Indies.
Insulacebus is an extinct monotypic genus of New World monkey found on the island of Hispaniola from Late Quaternary deposits. Fossils of the type species Insulacebus toussaintiana have been recovered from the Plain of Formon, Department du Sud, southwestern Haiti. The body mass of the monkey was estimated between 4,159 and 5,443 grams. The dentally primitive I. toussaintiana was likely derived from a fauna that was evolving on the mainland before the Miocene monkey bed of the Honda Group of central Colombia, and stems from a pre-Middle Miocene colonization from the South American mainland.
Acanthostichus hispaniolicus is an extinct species of ant in the subfamily Dorylinae known from a group of possibly Miocene fossils found on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. A. hispaniolicus is the first species of the ant genus Acanthostichus to have been described from fossils found in Dominican amber, and is the only species of Acanthostichus found in the West Indies.
Scolopax anthonyi is a prehistoric species of woodcock in the family Scolopacidae that was once endemic to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.
Gallinago kakuki is a prehistoric species of snipe in the family Scolopacidae that was once endemic to the West Indies. Fossils of this species are known from the Bahamas, Cuba, and Cayman Brac in the Cayman Islands.
Megalocnidae is an extinct family of sloths, native to the islands of the Greater Antilles from the Early Oligocene to the Mid-Holocene. They are known from Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, but are absent from Jamaica. While they were formerly placed in the Megalonychidae alongside two-toed sloths and ground sloths like Megalonyx, recent mitochondrial DNA and collagen sequencing studies place them as the earliest diverging group basal to all other sloths. They displayed significant diversity in body size and lifestyle, with Megalocnus being terrestrial and probably weighing several hundred kilograms, while Neocnus was likely arboreal and similar in weight to extant tree sloths, at less than 10 kilograms.