Back to Nest, After a Long Way!
Class : Aves
Order : Charadriiformes
Family : Glareolidae
Genus : Rhinoptilus
Species: Rhinoptilus bitorquatus
The Jerdon’s Courser Rhinoptilus bitorquatus is a plover-like species which had been considered to be extinct for more than 80 years until it was rediscovered in the 1980s inhabiting a tiny area of land in the Andhra Pradesh region of Southern India. Its breeding habits are a mystery and its nest and eggs have never been found by ornithologists.
The only egg known to exist of one of the world’s most critically endangered birds has been discovered. Aberdeen University announced that the egg is coming from the nest of a Jerdon’s Courser has been found in a a century-old collection housed in a drawer at the institution’s Zoology museum. The egg was part of a small collection put together by Ernest Meaton, a veterinary surgeon working at the Kolar Gold Fields to the east of Bangalore, probably in 1917.
The identification was only confirmed after DNA was extracted from dried up membrane very gently scraped from the inside of the egg. It was found to match DNA taken from the toe of a 140-year-old Jerdon’s Courser skin from Natural History Museum, Tring.
Source: http://www.abdn.ac.uk
Class : Aves
Order : Charadriiformes
Family : Glareolidae
Genus : Rhinoptilus
Species: Rhinoptilus bitorquatus
The Jerdon’s Courser Rhinoptilus bitorquatus is a plover-like species which had been considered to be extinct for more than 80 years until it was rediscovered in the 1980s inhabiting a tiny area of land in the Andhra Pradesh region of Southern India. Its breeding habits are a mystery and its nest and eggs have never been found by ornithologists.
The only egg known to exist of one of the world’s most critically endangered birds has been discovered. Aberdeen University announced that the egg is coming from the nest of a Jerdon’s Courser has been found in a a century-old collection housed in a drawer at the institution’s Zoology museum. The egg was part of a small collection put together by Ernest Meaton, a veterinary surgeon working at the Kolar Gold Fields to the east of Bangalore, probably in 1917.
The identification was only confirmed after DNA was extracted from dried up membrane very gently scraped from the inside of the egg. It was found to match DNA taken from the toe of a 140-year-old Jerdon’s Courser skin from Natural History Museum, Tring.
Source: http://www.abdn.ac.uk
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