The Saint Helena rail (''Aphanocrex podarces'') was a large flightless rail from

Saint Helena Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...

. It became extinct in the early 16th century. When American ornithologist Alexander Wetmore described this species from subfossil remains which were found at Prosperous Bay, Saint Helena, he classified it into the new genus ''Aphanocrex''. However, in 1973 American paleontologist Storrs Olson synonymised this genus with the genus ''Atlantisia'', the other representative of which was the

Inaccessible Island rail The Inaccessible Island rail (''Laterallus rogersi'') is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. Endemic to Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic, it is the smallest extant flightless bird in the worl ...

(''Atlantisia rogersi''). While Olson had considered it as congener of the Inaccessible Island rail, other scientists regarded it not even as a close relative and so it was renamed as ''Aphanocrex''. The Saint Helena rail was relatively large and reached almost the size of the New Zealand

weka The weka, also known as the Māori hen or woodhen (''Gallirallus australis'') is a flightless bird species of the rail family. It is endemic to New Zealand. It is the only extant member of the genus ''Gallirallus''. Four subspecies are recognize ...

(''Gallirallus australis''). In contrast to the weka it was more slender. Since Saint Helena was predator free until the sixteenth century, the swamphen had lost its ability to fly but its wings were better developed like the wings of the rails from Inaccessible Island and

Ascension Island Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory o ...

. Furthermore, it had strong toes with long claws, which gave that species a good ability to climb and flutter up the steep valley walls. It fed probably on the eggs and the juveniles of several Saint Helena terrestrial and

pelagic The pelagic zone consists of the water column of the open ocean, and can be further divided into regions by depth (as illustrated on the right). The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or wa ...

bird species and on

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...

s. Like other ground-nesting birds such as the Saint Helena crake and the Saint Helena hoopoe it became a victim of alien

predators Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...

like cats and rats which were brought to

after 1502. Storrs Olson suggested that ''Aphanocrex'' may have fed on food dropped by visiting seabirds.OLSON, S.L. 1973. Evolution of the rails of the South Atlantic Islands (Aves Rallidae). Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 152: iii + 53 pp

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Further reading