List of Late Quaternary prehistoric bird species


Late Quaternary prehistoric birds are avian taxa that became extinct during the Late Quaternary – the Holocene or Late Pleistocene – and before recorded history, or more precisely, before they could be studied alive by ornithological science. They became extinct before the period of global scientific exploration that started in the late 15th century. In other words, this list basically deals with extinctions between 40,000 BC and 1500 AD. For the purposes of this article, a "bird" is any member of the clade Neornithes, that is, any descendant of the most recent common ancestor of all currently living birds.
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The birds are known from their remains, which are subfossil. Some are also known from folk memory, as in the case of Haast's eagle in New Zealand. As the remains are not completely fossilized, they may yield organic material for molecular analyses to provide additional clues for resolving their taxonomic affiliations.
The extinction of the taxa in this list was coincident with the expansion of Homo sapiens beyond Africa and Eurasia, and in most cases, anthropogenic factors have played a crucial part in their extinction, be it through hunting, introduced predators or habitat alteration. It is notable that a large proportion of the species are from oceanic islands, especially in Polynesia. Bird taxa that evolved on oceanic islands are usually very vulnerable to hunting or predation by rats, cats, dogs or pigs – animals commonly introduced by humans – as they evolved in the absence of mammalian predators, and therefore have only rudimentary predator avoidance behavior. Many, especially rails, have additionally become flightless for the same reason and thus presented even easier prey.
Taxon extinctions taking place before the Late Quaternary happened in the absence of significant human interference. Rather, reasons for extinction are stochastic abiotic events such as bolide impacts, climate changes, mass volcanic eruptions etc. Alternatively, species may have gone extinct due to evolutionary displacement by successor or competitor taxa – it is notable for example that in the early Neogene, seabird biodiversity was much higher than today; this is probably due to competition by the radiation of marine mammals after that time. The relationships of these ancient birds are often hard to determine, as many are known only from very fragmentary remains and complete fossilization precludes analysis of information from DNA, RNA or protein sequencing.
The taxa in this list should be classified with the "Prehistoric" in their individual accounts.

Taxonomic list of Late Quaternary prehistoric birds

All of these are Neornithes.

Struthioniformes

The ostrich and related ratites.
An extinct clade of massive galloansere birds.
The group that includes modern ducks and geese.
The group that includes modern chickens and quails.
True Galliformes
s, auks, shorebirds
The group that includes modern rails and cranes.
The group that includes modern boobies and cormorants.
The group that includes modern flamingos
The group that includes modern albatrosses, petrels and storm petrels.
Birds of prey
Nightjars and potoos
Owlet-nightjars
Swifts and hummingbirds.
s and relatives. Formerly included in Coraciiformes.
, puffbird and jacamars.
Owls and barn owls.

General

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