Dieffenbach's Rail (Hypotaenidia dieffenbachii)
Posted on 31 December, 1840 in Extinct
Year Last Seen:
1840
Comments:
This species was found on the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, but was driven to extinction by the depredations of introduced species. It has not been seen since 1840.
Habitat:
Nothing is known, though it may have inhabited scrub or forest.
Causes:
Its extinction was presumably due to predation by introduced rats, cats and dogs, and habitat loss from fire (Marchant and Higgins 1993).
Distribution:
Hypotaenidia dieffenbachii was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, New Zealand (Marchant and Higgins 1993). It is known from the type specimen in the Natural History Museum at Tring, U. K. (Knox and Walters 1994), and from abundant subfossil material (Tennyson and Millener 1994). The species was already scarce when the type was collected in 1840 (Marchant and Higgins 1993) and is likely to have become extinct around this time (Hume 2017).