Species

Justification
This species formerly occurred on St Helena, but is now Extinct. It was presumably driven to extinction by hunting soon after the island was discovered in 1502.

Taxonomic source(s)
Brooks, T. 2000. Extinct species. In: BirdLife International (ed.), Threatened birds of the world, pp. 701-708. Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, Barcelona and Cambridge, U.K.

Distribution and population
Upupa antaios was a giant, flightless hoopoe, endemic to St Helena (to UK) (Olson 1975b). It is known only from bones and is thought to have become extinct soon after the discovery of the island in 1502.

Ecology
Nothing is known, though it is likely to have been similar to the extant Upupa species.

Threats
The causes of extinction are unknown (Olson 1975b), but presumably it was hunted to extinction by people and introduced predators.

References
Olson, S. L. 1975. Paleornithology of St Helena Island, South Atlantic Ocean. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 23: 1-49.

Text account compilers
Brooks, T., Khwaja, N., Mahood, S.

IUCN Red List evaluators
Butchart, S., Symes, A.

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2013) Species factsheet: Upupa antaios. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 24/05/2013. Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2013) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 24/05/2013.

This information is based upon, and updates, the information published in BirdLife International (2000) Threatened birds of the world. Barcelona and Cambridge, UK: Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, BirdLife International (2004) Threatened birds of the world 2004 CD-ROM and BirdLife International (2008) Threatened birds of the world 2008 CD-ROM. These sources provide the information for species accounts for the birds on the IUCN Red List.

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