Extinct boobies return from the dead
IT HAPPENED to Mark Twain, now it has happened to an enigmatic species of gannet: reports of its death, it seems, are greatly exaggerated.
The Tasman booby (Sula dactylatra tasmani) was first described in 1988 from fossils found on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, off the east coast of Australia, but went extinct in the late 18th century after being eaten by European sailors.
Now, a team of geneticists, palaeontologists and naturalists has declared the bird very much alive. It is living among its fossil ancestors on both islands, and also on New Zealand's Kermadec Islands to the east (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0478).
Geneticist Tammy Steeves, of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and colleagues found a perfect match when they analysed DNA fragments from six Tasman booby fossils and compared them to DNA from a living bird from the islands, Sula dactylatra fullagari, described in 1990. Under the rules of taxonomy, the bird reverts to its first recorded name: S. d. tasmani.
So why was it thought to be extinct in the first place? "It is a bit curious," Steeves says. Female Tasman boobies are larger than the male, so maybe a female fossil was compared to a living male and didn't match, she suggests.
The Tasman booby is one of several species that have apparently returned from the dead, including a small-eared shrew rediscovered in Mexico last month and a dwarf cloud rat found in a Philippine forest in 2008.
