Uploaded May 2024 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago

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About 136,000 years ago, on a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, there lived a flightless bird. And when this atoll was swallowed up by the waves, that bird went extinct. ... Or did it? Did the flightless Aldabra rail evolve twice?

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Sources:
nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/may/birds-on-an-island-in-the-indian-ocean-evolved-flightlessness-twice.html
nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05329-1
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192675#pone.0192675.ref009
researchportal.port.ac.uk/files/20131781/Repeated_evolution_of_flightlessness.pdf
birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/whtrai1/cur/introduction
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.1971.0022
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927662
seychellesnewsagency.com/articles/1327/Seychelles+Islands+Foundation+working+to+classify+Aldabra+Rail+as+a+separate+species
carnegiemnh.org/a-match-made-by-coevolution
researchgate.net/profile/Andrej-Spiridonov-2/publication/339308200_Moving_towards_a_better_understanding_of_iterative_evolution_an_example_from_the_late_Silurian_Monograptidae_Graptolithina_of_the_Baltic_Basin/links/605bd652299bf17367686519/Moving-towards-a-better-understanding-of-iterative-evolution-an-example-from-the-late-Silurian-Monograptidae-Graptolithina-of-the-Baltic-Basin.pdf
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192675#references
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Thumb Image Credit: Ian Davies / youtube.com/@theBirdsGuy
Images:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Darwin%27s_finches_by_Gould.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dryolimnas_cuvieri_abbotti.jpg
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192675#references
search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxonCode=whtrai1&subId=S120646384
search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxonCode=whtrai1&subId=S54342870
flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/50884719468/in/album-72157718074612568
gettyimages.com/detail//1319245938
gettyimages.com/detail//1873922239
gettyimages.com/detail/1189180601
gettyimages.com/detail/1205723154
gettyimages.com/detail/1210192652
gettyimages.com/detail/1254845401
gettyimages.com/detail/1298712957
gettyimages.com/detail/1386115358
gettyimages.com/detail/1422137124
gettyimages.com/detail/1456401923
gettyimages.com/detail/1457477523
gettyimages.com/detail/1461341351
gettyimages.com/detail/1759260858
gettyimages.com/detail/1932566415
gettyimages.com/detail/2029974605
gettyimages.com/detail/472674730
gettyimages.com/detail/487966660
gettyimages.com/detail/491293328
gettyimages.com/detail/666002424
gettyimages.com/detail/820677950
gettyimages.com/detail/1311051529
inaturalist.org/observations/105320184
inaturalist.org/observations/4425241
youtu.be/d0WD7VAPbFg?si=0sEIwVNVcVCJjYe7