Puffinus holeae Walker, Wragg & Harrison, 1990

Hole’s shearwater, Dune shearwater, Canarian shearwater

Taxonomy & Nomenclature

Conservation Status

Extinct (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025)

Last record: 3395 ± 30 yr BP (Rando & Alcover, 2009); 1159-790 BCE (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2025)

Rando & Alcover (2009) obtained an age of 3395 ± 30 yr BP for a humerus excavated from the Islet of Lobos off the north-eastern coast of Fuerteventura, using accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) dating. This date was refined by calibrating it using the marine 04.14C calibration curve, which returned a date of 1409-1230 cal yr BC. This date was again refined using a ΔR = 275 ± 67 calibration, obtained from sampling the nearest marine samples (Algarve, Portugal), which returned a date of 1159-790 cal yr BC. Rando and Alcover (2009) therefore considered the lower (i.e. older) of these two intervals (i.e. 1159 cal yr BC) was the minimum extinction date (MED).

Distribution & Habitat

Fuerteventura (including Islet of Lobos) & Lanzarote, Canary Islands, North Africa

Biology & Ecology

Hypodigm

Media

Above: head and neck fossil bones in the Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre - Tenerife. Photo by Ghedo (CC 4.0). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

References

Original scientific description:

Walker, Cyril Alexander, Wragg, Graham M. and Harrison, Colin James Oliver. (1990). A new shearwater from the Pleistocene of the Canary Islands and its bearing on the evolution of certain Puffinus shearwaters. Historical Biol 3: 203-224.

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)]

McMinn, M., Jaume, D. and Alcover, J. A. (1990). Puffinus olsoni n. sp.: nova espècie de baldritja recentment extinguida provinent de depòsits espeleològics de Fuerteventura i Lanzarote (Illes Canàries, Atlàntic Oriental). Endins 16: 63-71.

Michaux, J. et al. (1991). New fossil faunas from Fuerteventura, Canary islands: Evidence for a Pleistocene age of endemic rodents and shrews. Comptes Rendues de l’Academie de Sciences de Paris, 312, sér. II: 801-806.

Mlíkovský, Jiří. (2002). Cenozoic Birds of the World: Part 1: Europe. Praha, Czech Republic: Ninox Press.

Rando, Juan Carlos and Alcover, Josep Antoni. (2009). On the extinction of the Dune Shearwater (Puffinus holeae) from the Canary Islands. Journal of Ornithology 151(2): 365-369.

Sánchez Marco, A. (2003). Nuevo hallazgo de aves marinas del Pleistoceno de Fuerteventura (Islas Canarias). Coloquios de Paleontología, vol. ext. I: 627-636.

Sánchez Marco, A. (2010). New data and an overview of the past avifaunas from the Canary Islands. Ardeola 57(1): 13-40.

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.

https://extinctanimals.proboards.com/thread/19299/puffinus-holeae-holes-shearwater

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