Tongatapu rail

Tongatapu rail; Temporal range: Late Holocene
	Watercolour painting by Georg Forster
Conservation status
	; Extinct (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Gruiformes
Family:	Rallidae
Genus:	Gallirallus
Species:	G. hypoleucus
Binomial name
	Gallirallus hypoleucus; (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867)
Synonyms
	Rallus hypoleucus;

The Tongatapu rail (Gallirallus hypoleucus) was a species of bird in the family Rallidae. It was apparently native to the island of Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga, in Polynesia in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is known only from brief descriptions of a specimen, now lost, collected from Tongatapu in 1777 in the course of James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, and from a contemporary illustration by Georg Forster.^[1]

References

^ Medway, D.G. (2010). "The Tongatapu rail Gallirallus hypoleucus (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867) – an extinct species resurrected?" (PDF). Notornis. 57 (4): 199–203.

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[1] Medway, D.G. (2010). "The Tongatapu rail Gallirallus hypoleucus (Finsch & Hartlaub, 1867) – an extinct species resurrected?" (PDF). Notornis. 57 (4): 199–203.

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