The exinct macaw Ara autochthones, previously known only from a single bone from an archaeological site on St. Croix, Virgin Islands, is here identified from several associated bones from an archaeological site in south-central Puerto Rico. The species belongs to a distinctive intermediate size-class and was larger than the Cuban Macaw Ara tricolor. It is assumed to have been endemic to the West Indies, but prehistoric interisland transport of parrots by humans makes interpreting the natural distribution of the species impossible in the absence of fossils. Historical reports of macaws elsewhere in the West Indies are rendered dubious for the same reason.
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1 July 2008
New evidence of Ara autochthones from an archeological site in puerto rico: a valid species of West Indian macaw of unknown geographical origin (Aves: Psittacidae)
Storrs L. Olson,
Edgar J. Maíz López
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Caribbean Journal of Science
Vol. 44 • No. 2
2008
Vol. 44 • No. 2
2008
Amazona
biogeography
extinction
human transport
parrots