The Huahine Rail was a species of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in the Rallidae

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...

 family. It was a medium-sized Gallirallus

Gallirallus

Gallirallus is a genus that contains about a dozen living species of rails that live in the Australasian-Pacific region. Many of these, including the most well-known one - the bold and inquisitive weka of New Zealand - are flightless or nearly so; others, such as the Buff-banded Rail, can go for...

rail endemic to Huahine

Huahine

Huahine is an island located among the Society Islands, in French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Leeward Islands group . The island has a population of about 6,000.-Geography:...

 in the Society Islands

Society Islands

The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...

 of French Polynesia

French Polynesia

French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...

. It is known only from subfossil remains found at the Fa'ahia

Fa'ahia

Fa'ahia is an early Polynesian occupation site in the north of the island of Huahine, in the Society Islands, French Polynesia. With the neighbouring Vaito'otia site it dates to between 700 CE and 1200 CE. Because much of the site is waterlogged, artefacts made of organic materials have been well...

 archaeological site

Archaeological site

An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...

 on the island. Fa'ahia is an early Polynesian

Polynesians

The Polynesian peoples is a grouping of various ethnic groups that speak Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic languages within the Austronesian languages, and inhabit Polynesia. They number approximately 1,500,000 people...

 occupation site with radiocarbon dates

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

 ranging from 700 CE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

 to 1200 CE. The rail is only one of a suite of birds found at the site which became extinct

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 either locally or globally following human occupation of the island.

Etymology

The species was named after Storrs Olson to recognise his contributions to the systematics, paleontology and evolution of flightless rails on islands.