The New Zealand musk duck (''Biziura delautouri''), also known as de Lautour's duck, is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

stiff-tailed duck The stiff-tailed ducks, the genus ''Oxyura'', are part of the Oxyurini tribe of ducks. All have, as their name implies, long, stiff tail feathers, which are erected when the bird is resting. All have relatively large, swollen bills. These are ...

native to

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 ...

. 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 ...

bones. Its closest relative was the living Australian

musk duck The musk duck (''Biziura lobata'') is a highly aquatic, stiff-tailed duck native to southern Australia. It is the only living member of the genus ''Biziura''. An extinct relative, the New Zealand musk duck or de Lautour's duck (''B. delautouri ...

''Biziura lobata'', with which it has sometimes been combined.

History

The first discovery of the fossil remains of the duck, a single

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) and meta ...

associated with large numbers of

moa Moa are extinct giant flightless birds native to New Zealand. The term has also come to be used for chicken in many Polynesian cultures and is found in the names of many chicken recipes, such as Kale moa and Moa Samoa. Moa or MOA may also refer ...

bones, was made at Enfield, near

Oamaru Oamaru (; mi, Te Oha-a-Maru) is the largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, it is the main town in the Waitaki District. It is south of Timaru and north of Dunedin on the Pacific coast; State Highway 1 and the railway ...

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 ...

of New Zealand. It was first described, as ''Biziura delautouri'', in March 1892 by Dr Henry Forbes, the director of the Canterbury Museum in

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

at the time, who named it after Dr H. de Lautour of Oamaru, who helped acquire the specimen. Another paper by Forbes later used the spelling ''Biziura lautouri''; but the earlier name has priority. Subsequently, additional material was obtained from Marfells Beach, adjacent to

Lake Grassmere Lake Grassmere / Kapara Te Hau is a New Zealand waituna-type lagoon in the northeastern South Island, close to Cook Strait. The lake is used for the production of salt. Geography Lake Grassmere, south of Blenheim and south of the mouth of ...

at the north-eastern end of the South Island, and described in 1969 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 ...

, who considered the bird to be referable to ''B. lobata''. Later finds of musk duck fossils have been made 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 ...

and Waikuku Beach on the North Island.

Description

The duck was evidently very similar to the Australian musk duck, though complications in interpreting measurements of the bones arise from the Australian, and apparently the New Zealand birds' strong

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...

with males being considerably larger than females. However, an analysis of the available ''Biziura'' material from New Zealand by

Trevor Worthy Trevor Henry Worthy (born 3 January 1957) is an Australia-based paleozoologist from New Zealand, known for his research on moa and other extinct vertebrates. Biography Worthy grew up in Broadwood, Northland, and went to Whangarei Boys' High S ...

indicated the bird was distinctly larger than its Australian relative. Allowing for the larger size, the measurements indicate that the New Zealand bird also had relatively bigger legs and shorter wings than the Australian, suggesting that it was becoming more sedentary, although still fully capable of flight. The combination of differences in size, shapes, and the relative proportions of the bones confirm that the New Zealand musk duck was a distinct species.

Ecology

The two main fossil sites in which the bird has been found, Lake Poukawa and Marfells Beach adjacent to Lake Grassmere, are major wetlands, suggesting that New Zealand musk ducks had similar ecological needs to Australian musk ducks, which are almost entirely aquatic, living in large, permanent swamps, lakes and estuaries with deep water to forage in.

Kerry-Jayne Wilson Kerry-Jayne Wilson (6 March 1949 – 29 March 2022) was a New Zealand biologist and lecturer in ecology at Lincoln University in the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Work As an undergraduate, Wilson spent the summer of 1969–1970 ...

speculated that:

"De Lautour’s duck probably preyed on crayfish, large insects, molluscs and fish – larger prey than those taken by the other ducks."

It became extinct in about the 16th century because of hunting by humans.

References

External links

Reconstruction of New Zealand musk duck by Paul Martinson.
Artwork produced for the book ''Extinct Birds of New Zealand'', by Alan Tennyson, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2006. {{Taxonbar, from=Q7015521 Ducks Oxyurinae Birds described in 1892 Taxa named by Henry Ogg Forbes Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Extinct birds of New Zealand Bird extinctions since 1500 Species made extinct by human activities