Forbes's snipe (''Coenocorypha chathamica'') was a species of New Zealand snipe

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to 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 ...

. It was the larger of two species found there, the smaller being the surviving

Chatham snipe The Chatham snipe or Chatham Island snipe (''Coenocorypha pusilla'') is a species of wader in the family Scolopacidae. It is endemic to the Chatham Islands of New Zealand, and is only found on a few islands in the south of the Chatham Islands gro ...

. It was never seen alive by scientists and is known only from

fossil 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 ...

material collected on the islands. Why it became

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 ...

while its smaller relative survived is a mystery, as is the exact timing of its extinction, although it may have survived, unnoticed, until the 15th century.

References

*Tennyson, A. & Martinson, P. (2006) ''Extinct Birds of New Zealand'' Te Papa Press,Wellington *Worthy, Trevor H., & Holdaway, Richard N. (2002) ''The Lost World of the Moa'', Indiana University Press:Bloomington,

External links

''Forbes' snipe. Coenocorypha chathamica.''
by Paul Martinson. Artwork produced for the book ''Extinct Birds of New Zealand'', by Alan Tennyson, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2006 {{Taxonbar, from=Q1261924

Forbes's snipe Forbes's snipe (''Coenocorypha chathamica'') was a species of New Zealand snipe endemic to the Chatham Islands. It was the larger of two species found there, the smaller being the surviving Chatham snipe. It was never seen alive by scientists an ...

Extinct birds of the Chatham Islands Bird extinctions since 1500 Late Quaternary prehistoric birds

Taxa named by Henry Ogg Forbes