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

Saint Helena Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...

. 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. Early life and education The son of a Country Physician, Frank Al ...

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

(''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 was renamed as ''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. It is the only extant member of the genus ''Gallirallus''. Four subspecies are recognize ...

(''Gallirallus australis''). In contrast to the weka it was more slender. Since Saint Helena was predator free until the sixteenth century, the swamphen 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, Cairn Peak, reaches , and the island is in area. The volcano was last active six million years ago and is curren ...

and

Ascension Island Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the 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 Overseas Territory o ...

. 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 (as illustrated on the right). The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or wa ...

bird species and on

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

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 South Atlantic Ocean, one of two flightless rails which survived there until the early 16th century.Storrs L. Olson, Paleornith ...

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 the hoopoe (family Upupidae), known exclusively from an incomplete subfossil skeleton. It was last seen around 1550 ...

it became a victim of alien

predators Predation is a biological interaction where 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 the ...

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

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