FOSSILS OF UNKNOWN SONGBIRD SPECIES DISCOVERED IN 12,000-YEAR-OLD VOLCANO

BY JANICE WILLIAMS ON 7/27/17 AT 5:11 PM

Hundreds of years ago, various species of Bullfinch songbirds took flight and lived among the Azores archipelago, a group of nine major islands in the Atlantic Ocean about 900 miles away from Portugal. A number of the small bird species, known for their short and wide beak, were wiped out following Portuguese colonization of the archipelago in the 1400s. However, scientists recently found fossils of a new species of the Bullfinch songbird in a 12,000-year-old volcano on the Azores’ Graciosa Island.

An international team of researchers led by paleontologist Josep Antoni Alcover, from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, discovered the bones of the new extinct songbird species, Pyrrhula crassa, while excavating an enclave where lava once flowed within the volcano. Despite the small number of bones the scientists found, the remains discovered were sufficiently distinctive enough for the researchers to classify the songbird within its own unique species.

The report of the finding, published in the journal Zootaxa on Wednesday, focused specifically on how the team analyzed morphology of the bird’s beak to determine the new species—and its relatively large size. The researchers noted that the Pyrrhula crassa skull remains they found were significantly bigger than the skulls of other songbirds that once roamed the Azores, and of current living species of the bird. They also found the Pyrrhula crassa wing length to be bigger than the average songbird, suggesting this may have allowed it to fly in a way similar to that of larger birds living on São Miguel Island.

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New bird that humans drove to extinction discovered in Azores

Date: July 26, 2017

Source: SINC

Summary: Inside the crater of a volcano on Graciosa Island in the Azores archipelago, in the Atlantic Ocean, an international team of researchers has discovered the bones of a new extinct species of songbird, a bullfinch which they have named Pyrrhula crassa. The remains were found in a small cavity through which time ago the lava flowed. This bird disappeared a few hundreds of years ago due to human colonization of the islands and the introduction of invasive species.

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The five bird species that Darwin couldn’t discover in Madeira and the Azores

Date:January 22, 2016

Source:Plataforma SINC

When Charles Darwin visited the Azores islands in the 19th Century, the birds he observed were familiar to him. However, if he had travelled there 500 years before, he would have found an ornithofauna as particular as that of the Galápagos. The recent discovery in these Portuguese islands and in Madeira of five extinct species of rail, which lost the ability to fly due to having evolved on islands, confirms how fragile they are in the face of changes to their habitat like the ones that must have occurred after the first visits by humans over 500 years ago.

In September 1826, the British naturalist Charles Darwin visited the Azores archipelago during the HMS Beagle's return voyage to the United Kingdom after more than four years travelling the world. In his diary he only mentions the existence of starlings, wagtails, finches and blackbirds; however, on the islands also lay the remains of other birds which populated the islands a few centuries before his visit. A new study, published in 'Zootaxa', now highlights the discovery of five extinct rail species, two in Madeira and three in the Azores.

"The species of birds very probably disappeared following the arrival of humans and the animals that came with them, like mice, rats and cats," told Josep Antoni Alcover

Paleontological exploration by Spanish, German and Portuguese researchers has made it possible to "discover new species of birds that very probably disappeared following the arrival of humans and the animals that came with them, like mice, rats and cats," according to Josep Antoni Alcover, a CSIC researcher working at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA-CSIC/UIB) and co-author of the paper.

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RISK OF EXTINCTION: Europe’s smallest bird at risk of extinction

BY TPN/ LUSA, IN NEWS · 31-03-2014 08:41:00 

The estrelinha de Santa Maria, Europe’s smallest bird, is at risk of extinction due to the deterioration and loss of its natural habitat in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, José Andrade Melo, of the Friends of Santa Maria Heritage Club, was reported as telling the Lusa News Agency.

The Estrelinha de Santa Maria, or to give it its scientific name ‘Regulus regulus sanctae-mariae’, survives in a few areas of the Azorean island of Santa Maria in areas of subtropical humid laurel forests.

There, the Estrelinha finds its diet of insects, worms and spiders that enables it to grow up to 9 cm in length and with a wingspan of between 12 and 14 cm.

“The fact that the bird is confined to such a small space in territorial terms, that is the island of Santa Maria, in itself, already deserves a special conservation statute with the political and scientific obligation to come up with a preservation plan,” said Andrade Melo.

Instead, the loss of forest on the island was jeopardising the survival of the species.

“It is the very National Institute of Nature Conservation and Biodiversity that slaps the estrelinha with the statute of at risk of extinction,” said the NGO coordinator.

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São Miguel Scops Owl Was Wiped out After Arrival of Humans in the Azores

June 27, 2013 — On São Miguel Island in the Azores, there used to exist a small, nocturnal bird of prey, related to the European scops owl, named Otus frutuosoi, which was very probably driven to extinction with the arrival of the first settlers in the 15th century. An international study, in which Spanish researchers participated, has for the first time identified fossils of this species endemic to the island.

On 28 August 2011 researchers Juan Carlos Rando, from the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), and Josep Antoni Alcover from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca unearthed some small fossil bones buried not far below the ground of the Água de Pau cave (São Miguel Island, Azores, Portugal).

Two years later, an article published by the journal Zootaxa has revealed that the remains found belong to an extinct species of scops owl which has been given the name Otus frutuosoi in honour of the 16th-century Azorean historian Gaspar Frutuoso.

Carbon dating the fossils indicates that they are from 1,970 years ago. The hypothesis entertained by the researchers is that the arrival of human beings to the archipelago in the 15th century changed its ecosystem and caused the extinction of the species.

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