Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts
Late Holocene extinction of the New Zealand owlet-nightjar Aegotheles
novaezealandiae
Richard N. Holdaway
Palaecol Research, P.O. Box 16 569, Christchurch, New Zealand. Email:
piopio@paradise.net.nz
Martin D. Jones
Centre for Archaeological Research, University of Auckland, Private Bag
92 109, Auckland, New Zealand
Nancy R. Beavan Athfield
Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory, Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences,
P.O. Box 31 312, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.
Abstract The New Zealand owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles
novaezealandiae) was a small (c. 150 g), almost flightless endemic bird that
was widely distributed before human settlement. It was extinct before European
settlement and has not so far been found definitely in a Polynesian cultural
context. A series of accelerator mass spectrometry 14C ages on
gelatin from owlet-nightjar bones from non-cultural deposits was analysed
using Bayesian statistics. The results indicate that the owlet-nightjar may
have begun to decline before Polynesian settlement. Such a decline would
be consistent with the effects of predation by a new predator-most probably
the Pacific rat Rattus exulans.
Keywords New Zealand owlet-nightjar; Aegotheles
novaezealandiae; extinction; Rattus exulans; predation; human
impact
R01014 Received 30 July 2001; accepted 23 August 2002; published 26 November
2002
© Journal of The Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 32, Number 4,
December 2002, pp 653-667
PDF file of entire paper: Print-quality (196K) |
screen-quality (108K)
This year's abstracts |
Journal home page |
All abstracts |
Publishing home page
