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:

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)]

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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