The Barbados Rail is a fossil rail

Rallidae

The rails, or Rallidae, are a large cosmopolitan family of small to medium-sized birds. The family exhibits considerable diversity and the family also includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules...

 species endemic to Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

 with an undetermined taxonomic status. It was formerly described by Pierce Brodkorb

Pierce Brodkorb

Pierce Brodkorb , also stated as William Pierce Brodkorb, was an American ornithologist and paleontologist....

 in 1965 as Fulica podagrica. However, this classification has been questioned by Storrs Olson when he described Brodkorb's material anew in 1974. It is only known by Brodkorb's holotype which consists of a humerus

Humerus

The humerus is a long bone in the arm or forelimb that runs from the shoulder to the elbow....

 and several leg elements including femur

Femur

The femur , or thigh bone, is the most proximal bone of the leg in tetrapod vertebrates capable of walking or jumping, such as most land mammals, birds, many reptiles such as lizards, and amphibians such as frogs. In vertebrates with four legs such as dogs and horses, the femur is found only in...

, tibiotarsus

Tibiotarsus

The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia.A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae...

 and tarsometatarsus

Tarsometatarsus

The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is found in the lower leg of certain tetrapods, namely birds.It is formed from the fusion of several bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsal and metatarsal bones...

 fragments. The humerus may not be specifically distinct from those of the American Coot

American Coot

The American Coot is a bird of the family Rallidae, inhabiting wetlands and open water bodies. Measuring in length and across the wings, adults have a short thick white bill and white frontal shield, which usually has a reddish-brown spot near the top of the bill between the eyes...

 (Fulica americana) or the Caribbean Coot

Caribbean Coot

The Caribbean Coot is a large waterbird of the family Rallidae, which is a resident breeder in the Caribbean and parts of Venezuela. Several alleged sightings have occurred in North America, but these cannot be authenticated since some American Coots lack red knobs on the frontal shield of the bill...

 (Fulica caribaea) but most of the femur, tibiotarsus and tarsometarsus fragments are from a yet undescribed larger rail of an undetermined genus not related to Fulica. Olson further assumed that Brodkorb's material might be a composite of several rail species. The bone fragments were unearthed in Late Pleistocene

Late Pleistocene

The Late Pleistocene is a stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. The beginning of the stage is defined by the base of the Eemian interglacial phase before the final glacial episode of the Pleistocene 126,000 ± 5,000 years ago. The end of the stage is defined exactly at 10,000 Carbon-14 years BP...

 deposit

Deposition (geology)

Deposition is the geological process by which material is added to a landform or land mass. Fluids such as wind and water, as well as sediment flowing via gravity, transport previously eroded sediment, which, at the loss of enough kinetic energy in the fluid, is deposited, building up layers of...

s in Saint Philip Parish and Ragged Point

Ragged Point, Barbados

Ragged Point is a village in Saint Philip Parish in Barbados.A light house marks the eastern most point of the island, near the resisdents of the Steer family....

 on Barbados.

Etymology

Brodkorb's previous species epithet is derived from the Greek term "podagrikos" (which means affected with gout

Gout

Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...

). This applied in allusion to the large size of the leg elements.