Hodgens' waterhen (''Tribonyx hodgenorum'') is an extinct rail species from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. Its name commemorates the Hodgen brothers who were owners of the

Pyramid Valley Pyramid Valley is a locality in the Hurunui District of New Zealand. It is well known for its prominent limestone rock formations. It is located near Waikari in the North Canterbury region, 80 km north-west of Christchurch. On the foot of the ...

swamp where the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

was discovered. It reached a weight of 280 g and its wings were so reduced that it was unable to fly. It occupied a wide range of habitats, including open forest and grassland along riverbanks.

History

''Tribonyx hodgenorum'' was closely related to the black-tailed native-hen ('' Tribonyx ventralis'') and the Tasmanian native-hen ('' Tribonyx mortierii''). The species was first described by

Ron Scarlett Ronald Jack Scarlett (22 March 1911 – 9 July 2002) was a New Zealand paleozoologist. Early life and family Scarlett was born at Stoke, near Nelson, on 22 March 1911 to Walter Andrew Scarlett and Lilian Elsie (née Cresswell). He was the old ...

as ''Rallus hodgeni'' in 1955.

Storrs L. 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 ...

transferred it into the genus '' Gallinula'' in 1975 and changed its specific epithet to ''hodgenorum'' in 1986. It is only known from

subfossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

material of which the youngest

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

record is from the

18th century The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 ( MDCCI) to December 31, 1800 ( MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. During the century, slave trad ...

. Hundreds of bones have been unearthed at

in the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

, at

Lake Poukawa Lake Poukawa is a small shallow hardwater lake in the Hawke's Bay Region, North Island, New Zealand. It is located about 20 km south-west of Hastings, New Zealand, close to the settlement of Te Hauke. It is the largest lake lying within a ...

in the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

, and several other sites, indicating that it was once widespread in New Zealand except on the

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about te ...

. The main reasons for its extinction are likely to have been predation by the

Pacific rat The Polynesian rat, Pacific rat or little rat (''Rattus exulans''), known to the Māori as ''kiore'', is the third most widespread species of rat in the world behind the brown rat and black rat. The Polynesian rat originated in Southeast Asia, an ...

and hunting by human settlers.

References

*A. Tennyson und P. Martinson: ''Extinct birds of New Zealand.'' Te Papa Press, 2006, *Trevor H. Worthy & Richard N. Holdaway: ''The Lost World of the Moa. Prehistoric Life of New Zealand.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2002. *R. N. Holdaway, T. H. Worthy: ''A reappraisal of the late Quaternary fossil vertebrates of Pyramid Valley Swamp, North Canterbury, New Zealand''. New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 1997, Vol. 24: 69-121 0301-4223/2401-069.
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*Richard N. Holdaway, Trevor H. Worthy, Alan J. T. Tennyson: ''A working list of breeding bird species of the New Zealand region at first human contact''. New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 2001, Vol. 28: 119-18
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*Walter E. Boles: ''A New Flightless Gallinule (Aves: Rallidae: Gallinula) from the Oligo-Miocene of Riversleigh'', Northwestern Queensland, Australia. Records of the Australian Museum (2005) Vol. 57: 179?190.
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*R. N. Holdaway : ''New Zealand’s pre-human avifauna and its vulnerability'' 198
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* Tribonyx Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Extinct birds of New Zealand Holocene extinctions Birds described in 1986 {{Gruiformes-stub