Tongatapu rail

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Tongatapu rail
Temporal range: Late Holocene
Gallirallus hypoleucus.jpg
Watercolour painting by Georg Forster
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: Gallirallus
Species:
G. hypoleucus
Binomial name
Gallirallus hypoleucus
(Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867)
Synonyms
  • Rallus hypoleucus

The Tongatapu rail (Gallirallus hypoleucus) is an extinct species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was apparently native to the island of Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga, in Polynesia in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is known only from brief descriptions of a specimen, now lost, collected from Tongatapu in 1777 in the course of James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific, and from a contemporary illustration by Georg Forster. [1]

References

  1. Medway, D.G. (2010). "The Tongatapu rail Gallirallus hypoleucus (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867) – an extinct species resurrected?" (PDF). Notornis. 57 (4): 199–203. doi:10.63172/080765omfvvf.