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The red rail (''Aphanapteryx bonasia'') is an extinct, flightless rail. It was endemic to the Mascarene island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It had a close relative on Rodrigues island, the likewise extinct Rodrigues rail, with which it is sometimes considered congeneric. Its relationship with other rails is unclear. Rails often evolve flightlessness when adapting to isolated islands, free of mammalian predators. The red rail was a little larger than a chicken and had reddish, hairlike plumage, with dark legs and a long, curved beak. The wings were small, and its legs were slender for a bird of its size. It was similar to the Rodrigues rail, but was larger, and had proportionally shorter wings. It was also reminiscent of a kiwi and a limpkin. It is believed to have fed on invertebrates, and snail shells have been found with damage matching an attack by its beak. Human hunters took advantage of an attraction red rails had to red objects by using coloured cloth to lure the birds so that they could be beaten with sticks. Until subfossil remains were described in 1869, scientists only knew the red rail from 17th century descriptions and illustrations. These were thought to represent several different species, which resulted in a large number of invalid junior synonyms. It has been suggested that all late 17th-century accounts of the dodo actually referred to the red rail, after the former had become extinct. The last mention of a red rail sighting is from 1693, and it is thought to have gone extinct around 1700, due to predation by humans and introduced species. ==Taxonomy== The red rail was long known only from a few contemporary descriptions referring to red "hens" and names otherwise used for grouse or partridges in Europe, as well as the sketches of Pieter van den Broecke and Sir Thomas Herbert from 1617 and 1634. These were thought to depict separate species of birds by some authors, but were regarded as one by Hugh Edwin Strickland in 1848. Hermann Schlegel thought Broecke's sketch depicted a smaller dodo species from Mauritius, and that the Herbert sketch showed a dodo from Rodrigues, and named them ''Didus broecki'' and ''Didus herberti'' in 1854. Jacob Hoefnagel's 1610 painting, the 1601 sketch from the ''Gelderland'' ship's journal, and Peter Mundy's 1638 description and sketch later surfaced, but there was still uncertainty about the identity of the birds depicted. In the 1860s, subfossil foot bones and a lower jaw were found along with remains of other Mauritian animals in the Mare aux Songes swamp, and were described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1869, who identified them as belonging to a rail. He also determined they belonged to the birds in the 17th century descriptions and illustrations. Milne-Edwards combined the genus name of ''Aphanapteryx imperialis'', which had been coined the previous year by Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld for the Hoefnagel painting, with the older specific name ''broecki''.〔 Due to nomenclatural priority, the genus name was later combined with the oldest species name ''bonasia'', which was coined by Edmond de Sélys Longchamps in 1848. Sélys Longchamps had originally named the genus ''Apterornis'', wherein he also included the Réunion solitaire and the Réunion swamphen, but the name was preoccupied by ''Aptornis'', a bird described by Richard Owen in 1844. ''Aphanapteryx'' means "invisible-wing", but the meaning of ''bonasia'' is unclear. Some early accounts refer to red rails by the vernacular names for the hazel grouse, ''Tetrastes bonasia'', so the name evidently originates there. The name itself perhaps refers to ''bonasus'', meaning "bull" in Latin, or ''bonum'' and ''assum'', meaning "good roast". It has also been suggested to be a Latin form of the French word ''bonasse'', meaning simple-minded or good-natured.〔 More fossils were later found by Theodore Sauzier, who had been commissioned to explore the "historical souvenirs" of Mauritius in 1889. Around the end of the 19th century, a complete specimen was found by the barber Louis Etienne Thirioux, who also found important dodo remains.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red rail」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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