The Rodrigues rail (Erythromachus leguati), also known as Leguat's gelinote or Leguat's rail, is an extinct species of the rail family that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues. The bird was first documented from life by two accounts from 1691–93 and 1725–26. Subfossil remains were later discovered and correlated with the old accounts in 1874, and the species was named E. leguati in Leguat's honour. It is generally kept in its own genus, Erythromachus, but has sometimes been assigned to the genus Aphanapteryx along with its close relative the red rail (A. bonasia) of Mauritius; their relationship with other rails is unclear. The Rodrigues rail was about 35 cm (14 in) long and weighed at least 500 g (18 oz). It was described as having grey plumage, a red beak, red legs, and a naked red patch around the eye. The beak was long and curved downwards. It was flightless and fed on tortoise eggs. It was described as being attracted to red objects, which humans exploited while hunting it. The Rodrigues rail is believed to have become extinct in the mid-18th century mainly because of predation by introduced cats and hunting.
Taxonomy In 1848, the English zoologist Hugh Edwin Strickland called attention to a bird mentioned in the French traveller François Leguat's 1708 memoir A New Voyage to the East Indies about his stay on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues from 1691–93. Leguat was the leader of a group of nine French Huguenot refugees who settled on Rodrigues after they were marooned there. Leguat referred to the birds as "gelinottes" (translated as "wood-hens"), a name Strickland thought implied the grouse of Europe, though this was not consistent with the form of the beak described by Leguat. Strickland was unable to classify the bird further, but noted similarities with the dodo and kiwi, based on unidentified birds from Mauritius illustrated by the travellers Pieter van den Broecke and Sir Thomas Herbert, which he thought related. Strickland also noted similarities with a bird from Mauritius, which would later be identified as the red rail (Aphanapteryx bonasia).
In 1874, the French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards described subfossil bird bones from Rodrigues he had received via the British ornithologist Alfred Newton, which had been excavated under the supervision of his brother, Colonial Secretary Edward Newton. Milne-Edwards connected Leguat's account with three bones (a sternum, a tarsometatarsus, and a fragmentary skull) found in caves of the Plaine Corail region, Rodrigues. He recognised their similarity to those of the red rail, while noting it supposedly had a straighter beak (as described by Leguat). Milne-Edwards coined the generic name Erythromachus from the Greek words eruthros, "red", and makhç, "battle" (also translated as "hostile to red"), in reference to its attraction to red objects, and the specific name is in honour of Leguat. The name Erythromachus was incorrectly explained as referring to the Erythraean sea by the American ornithologist Charles Wallace Richmond in 1908. The name Miserythrus, from "red" and "hatred", was used by A. Newton in 1874 (originally only in a manuscript), and also refers to the rail's behaviour towards red, but as a newer name, it is a junior synonym. Milne-Edwards did not select a holotype specimen for the species from the bones he had loaned from Cambridge University Museum of Zoology for his study, but a syntype series was later listed from specimens there, presumably by A. Newton. In 1875, A. Newton also identified a reference to the bird in the 1725–26 account of the French traveller Julien Tafforet, Relation de l'Ile Rodrigue, which had recently been rediscovered. In 1879, more fossils, including skulls, were described by the zoologists Albert Günther and E. Newton, who confirmed that the bird was a rail, and also noted that some specimens had beaks as curved as that of the red rail. In 1921, the American linguist Geoffroy Atkinson questioned the bird's existence, in an article that doubted the veracity of Leguat's memoir. The American ornithologist James Greenway suggested in 1967 that Leguat's description referred to wind-blown purple swamphens, since the word grey is sometimes used synonymously with blue in old descriptions. This idea has not been accepted by other commentators. Today, it is widely accepted that Leguat's memoirs represent credible observations of local birds in life. His observations on the local fauna are considered some of the first cohesive accounts of animal behaviour in the wild. In 1999, the French palaeontologist Cécile Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues pointed out that a carpometacarpus bone assigned to the Rodrigues rail and illustrated by Günther and E. Newton in 1879 does not belong to a rail, and therefore not this bird. More subfossils have since been discovered, including an associated but incomplete skeleton with a complete skull and jaws found in Caverne Poule Rouge in 2005.
Evolution
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