''Antigone cubensis'', sometimes called the Cuban flightless crane, is a large,

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of crane which was

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the island of

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

in the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

. The species was originally placed in the genus '' Grus'', as ''Grus cubensis'', however subsequent study of the genus resulted in moving the species to ''

Antigone ANTIGONE (Algorithms for coNTinuous / Integer Global Optimization of Nonlinear Equations), is a deterministic global optimization solver for general Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs (MINLP). History ANTIGONE is an evolution of GloMIQO, a global ...

'' in 2020. Subfossil remains were found in

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

deposits in

Pinar del Rio Pinar may refer to: * Pınar, Turkish feminine given name * Píñar, municipality located in the province of Granada, Spain * Pinar del Río, a city of Cuba * Pinar del Río Province The Pinar del Río Province is one of the 15 provinces of Cu ...

. Probably derived from an early invasion of

sandhill crane The sandhill crane (''Antigone canadensis'') is a species of large Crane (bird), cranes of North America and extreme northeastern Siberia. The common name of this bird refers to its habitat, such as the Platte River, on the edge of Nebraska's S ...

s from North America, it differed from that species by, as well as larger size, having a proportionately broader bill, stockier legs, and with reduced wings and pectoral girdle indicating that it may have been flightless. Currently, the only extant Caribbean crane is the Cuban sandhill crane, ''Antigone canadensis nesiotes'', an endangered subspecies of

endemic to the country.

References

Grus (genus) Extinct birds of the Caribbean Extinct animals of Cuba Extinct flightless birds Birds of Cuba Endemic birds of Cuba Pleistocene birds Fossil taxa described in 1971 {{Paleo-neornithine-stub