Rallus adolfocaesaris Alcover et al., 2015
Porto Santo rail
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Conservation Status
Extinct (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025)
Last record: "Late Pleistocene to late Holocene" (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025)
Distribution & Habitat
Porto Santo (Island), Madeira (archipelago), North Atlantic Ocean
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Alcover, Josep Antoni, Pieper, Harald, Pereira, Fernando and Rando, Juan C. (2015). Five new extinct species of rails (Aves: Gruiformes: Rallidae) from the Macaronesian Islands (North Atlantic Ocean). Zootaxa 4057 (2): 151-200.
Other references:
Faurby, Søren, Matthews, Tom J., Triantis, Kostas A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2026). Quantifying the unrecorded loss of avian phylogenetic diversity. Ecography 2026: e08267. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08267
Fernández-Palacios, José María, Fructuoso, Melania, Illera, Juan Carlos, Rando, Juan Carlos, de Nascimento, Lea, Fernández-Palacios, Enrique, Patiño, Jairo, Otto, Rüdiger, Castilla-Beltrán, Álvaro, González, Esther Martín, Orihuela-Rivero, Raúl, Alcover, Josep Antoni, Whittaker, Robert J. (2025). A synthesis of terrestrial species extinctions in the Macaronesian Islands and their correspondence with human occupancy. PNAS Nexus 4(8): pgaf215. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf215 [Supplementary data (.docx)]
Matthews, Thomas J., Triantis, Kostas A., Wayman, Joseph P., Martin, Thomas E., Hume, Julian P., Cardoso, Pedro, Faurby, Søren, Mendenhall, Chase D., Dufour, Paul, Rigal, François, Cooke, Rob, Whittaker, Robert J., Pigot, Alex L., Thébaud, Christophe, Jørgensen, Maria Wagner, Benavides, Eva, Soares, Filipa C., Ulrich, Werner, Kubota, Yasuhiro, Sadler, Jon P., Tobias, Joseph A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2024). The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions. Science 386(6717): 55-60. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk7898 [Supplementary Materials; Dryad dataset; Zenodo codeset]
Matthews, Thomas J., Wayman, Joseph P., Cardoso, Pedro, Sayol, Ferran, Hume, Julian P., Ulrich, Werner, Tobias, Joseph A., Soares, Filipa C., Thébaud, Christophe, Martin, Thomas E. and Triantis, Kostas A. (2022). Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity. Journal of Biogeography 49(11): 1920-1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14474 [Appendix S1 (.docx); Appendix S2 (.pdf)]
Pieper, Harald. (1985). The fossil land birds of Madeira and Porto Santo. Bocagiana 88: 1-6.
Sayol, Ferran, Steinbauer, Manuel J., Blackburn, Tim M., Antonelli, Alexandre and Faurby, Søren. (2020). Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds. Science Advances 6(49): eabb6095. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb6095 [Supplementary Material (Data File S1)]
Tyrberg, Tommy. (2009). Holocene avian extinctions, pp. 63-106. In: Turvey, Samuel T. (ed.). Holocene Extinctions. Oxford, UK & New York, USA: Oxford University Press. xii + 352 pp.