| Broad-billed Parrot | |
|---|---|
| Pophopsittacus mauritianus sketched by Joris Laerle in 1601 from the journal of Wolphart Harmanszoon | |
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Psittaciformes |
| Family: | Psittacidae |
| Subfamily: | Psittacinae |
| Genus: | Lophopsittacus Newton, 1875 |
| Species: | L. mauritianus |
| Binomial name | |
| Lophopsittacus mauritianus (Owen, 1866) |
|
| Former range (in red) | |
The Broad-billed Parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus) was a parrot endemic to the island of Mauritius that became extinct.
Contents |
The species was only known from subfossil bones described by Richard Owen, before being identified in 17th century descriptions wherein it was referred to as the "Indian Crow" or "Raven", as well as from three drawings. The first description of the bird comes the voyage of Admiral Jacob Cornelis van Neck in 1598:
Is a bird which we called the Indian Crow, more than twice as big as the parroquets, of two or three colours.[1]
The last description, and one of the most detailed, is by Johann Christian Hoffman from 1673–5, who stated:
There are also geese, flamingos, three species of pigeon of varied colours, mottled and green perroquets, red crows with recurved beaks and with blue heads, which fly with difficulty and have received from the Dutch the name of ‘Indian crow’.
The color may have been bluish gray, and there was a small frontal crest. It was a large, heavy-set parrot, and difference in size of fossil specimens and on the 1601 sketch indicate that the sexes was size dimorphic. It had a long tail and a reduced flight apparatus and may have been flightless, based on some analysis of the 1601 sketch, but this is disputed.[2] The bill was very large, but one author claimed it was comparatively weak and probably adapted to crush the pulp of large fruits so that they could be swallowed, but this has later been refuted, since the mandible morphology matches that of Hyacinth Macaw, which crack open palm nuts with ease.[3]
The affinities of Lophopsittacus are undetermined; despite its appearance and distribution suggesting it was related to the African Grey and Vasa Parrots, it is more likely that its real relationships lie with the Psittaculini radiation of South(east) Asia — notably, the Eclectus Parrot, the large-billed Tanygnathus parrots, and, interestingly, possibly most closely with the rather smallish and nimble Psittacula parakeets — given that most Mascarene bird species, such as the dodo, derive from Southeast Asian progenitors and that details of their morphology suggest a close relationship. As Psittacula species actually spread to the Mascarenes, this is not to be understood as if they are very closely related — the most likely scenario is that the "mysterious" Mascarene parrots (Lophopsittacus, Necropsittacus and Mascarinus) are derived from one or several early colonization by the progenitors of today's Psittacula, Lophopsittacus being most strongly differentiated and Necropsittacus having being still rather similar to Psittacula.
A smaller species of parrot was described in 1973 from very few bones as the Mauritius Grey Parrot, Lophopsittacus bensoni, and some early travelers' records of "small grey parrots",[4] but this has since been reclassified as a species of Psittacula, Thirioux’s grey parrot. Furthermore, there are reports of a small grey parrot from Réunion, which is now also thought to have been Thirioux’s grey parrot. This has long been the source of confusion surrounding the parrots on Mauritius.
It became extinct partly due to hunting, but more importantly due to predation by introduced pigs, Crab-eating Macaques, and rats, which fed on the eggs and young of this species, which was in all likelihood ground-nesting (a rare occurrence among parrots, the Kakapo, the Night Parrot and the two ground parrot species being essentially the only species doing so) due to its inability to fly.