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

Saint Helena Saint Helena (, ) is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km ...

. It became extinct in the early 16th century. When American ornithologist

Alexander Wetmore Frank Alexander Wetmore (June 18, 1886 – December 7, 1978) was an American ornithologist and avian paleontologist. He was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was also an elected member of both the American Philosophical Soc ...

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 Storrs Lovejoy Olson (April 3, 1944 – January 20, 2021) was an American biologist and ornithologist who spent his career at the Smithsonian Institution, retiring in 2008. One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, he was best known ...

synonymised this genus with the genus ''Atlantisia'', the other representative of which was the

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

(''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 is retained in ''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. Some authorities consider it as the only extant member of the genus '' Gallirallus''. ...

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

Inaccessible Island Inaccessible Island is a volcanic island located in the South Atlantic Ocean, south-west of Tristan da Cunha. Its highest point, Swale's Fell, reaches , and the island is in area. The volcano was last active approximately one million years a ...

and

Ascension Island Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean, 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 Overs ...

. 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. The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or water column between the sur ...

bird species and on

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

s. Like other ground-nesting birds such as the

Saint Helena crake The Saint Helena crake (''Zapornia astrictocarpus'') is an extinct bird species from the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean, one of two flightless birds, flightless Rallidae, rails which survived there until the ea ...

and the

Saint Helena hoopoe The Saint Helena hoopoe (''Upupa antaios''), also known as the Saint Helena giant hoopoe or giant hoopoe, is an extinct species of hoopoe (family Upupidae) known exclusively from an incomplete subfossil skeleton. Once endemic to the island of Sai ...

it became a victim of alien

predators Predation is a biological interaction in which 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 ...

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

s and rats which were brought to

after 1502.

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

References

Further reading