The Aldabra rail went extinct when it's island home sunk beneath the sea, but now it's back.
A new study says a bird that used to be extinct has re-evolved back into existence, again.
The bird species, Aldabra rail, went extinct around 136,000 years ago, but now is back and has reclaimed it’s Island home in the Indian Ocean, according to CBS News.
The island the bird calls home has sunk completely under water multiple times, wiping out everything that lived on it, according to a study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
But the Aldabra rail keeps coming back to the island, again and again.
That’s because the study calls the Aldabra rail an example of iterative evolution. That’s a rare phenomenon that means the species can re-emerge over and over even though it goes extinct at different points in the past.
The flightless bird was completely taken out about 136,000 years ago when the island sunk below sea level, according to CBS. When sea levels went back down a few thousand years later the birds re-colonized it.
Since the birds were pretty much the lone inhabitants of the island, they didn’t need the ability to fly and avoid predators. That also meant they couldn’t spread their wings and fly away from the island when it was submerged below sea level.
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