Created by Peter Maas for The Extinction Website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence.
The vernacular name "Réunion Flightless Ibis" is misleading, since travellers' reports as well as bone measurements indicate that it was well on its way to flightlessness, but could still fly some distance after a running take-off.
This taxon is better known under its old
name Réunion Solitaire, Raphus solitarius
(Sélys-Longchamps
1848), but the authors have made convincing case, on the basis of fossil
finds, that it is not a member of the Raphidae, but rather of the
Threskiornithidae. Biologists of the time of its discovery assumed that
this bird was a member of the solitaire
family, who called it the "Réunion Solitaire"
(Raphus solitarius) and classified it as a relative of the dodo,
Raphus
cucullatus.
Image: Réunion Solitaire at plate 25 from Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (1907) by Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild. This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the European Union, Canada, the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
The
Réunion Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis
solitarius) is an extinct
bird species which was native to the island of Réunion (BirdLife
International 2004). Réunion is an island and overseas
department (département d'outre-mer, or DOM) of France, located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, about 200 km southwest of Mauritius.
Image: map showing the location of the island of Réunion, the former range of the Réunion Sacred Ibis. Created by Peter Maas for The Extinction Website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence. This applies worldwide.
Threskiornis solitarius was given its present nomenclature by Baron Edmund de Sélys-Longchamps in 1848, but the species' existence was not confirmed until the discovery of bones on Réunion in the late twentieth century.
The closest relative of this species is the Sacred Ibis Threskiornis aethiopica from Africa. Other close relatives are the black-headed ibis Threskiornis melanocephalus, Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca, and the Straw-necked Ibis Threskiornis spinicollis.
Image (left): an Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis aethiopica). Photographed by Andrew Massyn Liesbeek (River Cape Town July 2006). Image (right): an Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca). Photographed by Bart and Marieke van der Heijden in 2004. All rights reserved.
References
Cheke, A. S. (1987) An ecological history of the Mascarene Islands, with particular reference to extinctions and introductions of land vertebrates. Pp. 5-89 in A. W. Diamond, ed. Studies of Mascarene island birds. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Hachisuka, M. (1953) The Dodo and kindred birds. London: Witherby.
Mourer-Chauviré, C. and Moutou, F. (1987) Découverte d'une forme récemment éteinte d'ibis endémique insulaire de l'île de la Réunion Borbonibis latipes n. gen. n. sp. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris. Serie D (II) 305: 419-423.
Mourer-Chauviré, C., Bour, R. and Ribes, S. (1995) Was the Solitaire of Réunion an ibis? Nature 373: 568.
Storer, R. W. (1970) Independent evolution of the Dodo and the Solitaire. Auk 87: 369-370.
Last
updated: 6th September 2008.
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