Early Settlers Drove Extinction of Nearly 1000 Bird Species

Moa (Dinornis robustus). Image courtesy of tnchanse/Flickr What was the largest extinction event of the last 12,000 years? Believe it or not, it's birds. Scientists now say almost a thousand species of birds---many of them the big, flightless variety---disappeared from the Pacific Islands during the Holocene, killed by early settlers before the Europeans ever arrived. And because many of these species could only be found on these islands, the loss of their endemic populations meant global extinction. Scientists pieced together the fossil record from the Late Quaternary period on 41 Pacific islands. After extrapolating to fill in the gaps, the researchers determined that at least 983 species of nonpasserine, or non-perching, birds went extinct, according to their results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. The total is expected to be much higher if seabirds or songbirds were included, but they left far fewer fossils. ...