Scientists have the DNA that shows the Bryan’s shearwater is a distinct species. What they’re missing is a Bryan’s shearwater to go with it. The last time anyone saw one was over a decade ago.
It’s a seabird. “Seabirds have a habit of hiding,” says Rob Fleischer, head of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics in Washington, D.C., who co-authored the study identifying Bryan’s shearwater as its own species, “they're long-lived, so they can be out at sea for a long time”.
Read the whole story in this article, First New U.S. Bird Species in Decades—Already Extinct?, at National Geographic.
Photo via National Geographic, courtesy of Reginald David, Smithsonian Institution.
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