The nature is always unpredictable.An extinct bird species came back from the dead and increased in numbers on their own. The white-throated rail established their homes on the Aldabra island centuries ago. They vanished suddenly when the island submerged around 136,000 years ago.
But the scientists have found fossils, proving that the species of rail emerged again.They colonized the island a second time as the sea levels fell down once in a while.But this time the rails lost their ability to fly. The flightless rails still surround the island.
How is it achieved?
The re-evolution of the Aldabra rails, the extinct bird species, is an example of iterative evolution — where the same descents leads to evolution of species at different periods. It states that an extinct species can emerge and grow over and again,despite vanishing a number of times in the past.
“We know of no other example in rails, that demonstrates this phenomenon so evidently,” Professor-cum- Paleobiologist David Martill,mentioned.
Extinct bird species: Tracing their evolution
“Only on Aldabra, fossil evidence available that demonstrates the effects of changing sea levels on recolonization events,” Martill said. The parent rails would often migrate due to unfavorable conditions from their origin Madagascar to better areas of East Africa and western islands.
While predators fed upon most of them in the west lands. Some drowned in the Indian Ocean, heading north. Usually the ones who flew to the east survived and took shelter in islands including Aldabra.
The rails were able to re-emerge every other time the sea levels lowered.
Today, where the threat of extinction is higher than expected, the Aldabra rails have made a great exception.