Antillean cave rail

Antillean cave rail Temporal range: Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene
Leg and foot bones
Conservation status
Extinct (Pre-Columbian)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Gruiformes
Genus:	†Nesotrochis
Species:	†N. debooyi
Binomial name
†Nesotrochis debooyi Wetmore, 1918
Location of Puerto Rico.

The Antillean cave rail (Nesotrochis debooyi), also known as DeBooy's rail, is an extinct rail species which occurred on Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. Bone fragments of this species were first unearthed by archaeologist Theodoor de Booy in kitchen midden deposits on the Richmond estate near Christiansted, U.S. Virgin Islands in July 1916 and described by Alexander Wetmore in 1918. The Antillean cave rail might have become extinct before the arrival of the Europeans but stories heard by Alexander Wetmore on Puerto Rico in 1912 about an easy-to-catch bird named carrao might refer to this species. The Antillean cave rail was apparently flightless and was hunted as food by the aborigines

References

• Wetmore, A. (1918): Bones of birds collected by Theodoor de Booy from Kitchen Midden deposits in the islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix
• Olson, S. L. (1974): A new species of Nesotrochis from Hispaniola, with notes on other fossil rails from the West Indies (Aves: Rallidae)

External links

• The Auk Vol. 55 (1938), p. 51: Bird remains from the West Indies by Alexander Wetmore
• Catalogue of Fossil birds by Pierce Brodkorb Part 3 - Family Rallidae p. 127
• Bird remains from the caves of Porto Rico. Bulletin of the AMNH ; v. 46, article 4., 1922