July 30, 2020
sprep-pa
A large fruit-eating bird from Tonga joins the dodo in the line-up of giant island pigeons hunted to extinction. Fossils found in a cave in ‘Eua, show that Tongoenas burleyi, a newly described genus and species, inhabited the Pacific islands for at least 60,000 years, but vanished within a century or two of human arrival around 2,850 years ago. Unlike the dodo and the extinct Viti Levu giant pigeon of Fiji, however, T. burleyi could fly.
