Taxonomy
The Red Rail was long known only from a few contemporary descriptions referring to red "hens" and names otherwise used for grouse or partridges in Europe, as well as the sketches of Pieter van den Broecke and Sir Thomas Herbert. These were thought to depict separate species of birds by some authors, but were regarded as one by Hugh Edwin Strickland in 1848. Hermann Schlegel thought Broecke's sketch depicted a smaller Dodo species from Mauritius, and that the Herbert sketch showed a Dodo from Rodrigues, and named them Didus broecki and Didus herberti in 1854. Jacob Hoefnagel's painting, the sketch from the Gelderland ship's journal, and Peter Mundy's description and sketch later surfaced, but there was still uncertainty about the identity of the birds depicted.
In the 1860s, subfossil foot bones and a lower jaw were found along with remains of other Mauritian animals in the Mare aux Songes swamp, and were described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1869, who identified them as belonging to a rail. He also determined they belonged to the birds in the 17th century descriptions and illustrations. Milne-Edwards combined the genus name of Aphanapteryx imperialis, which had been coined the previous year by Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld for the Hoefnagel painting, with the older specific name broecki. Due to nomenclatural priority, the genus name was later combined with the oldest species name bonasia, which was coined by Edmond de Sélys Longchamps in 1848. Longchamps had originally named the genus Apterornis, wherein he also included the Réunion Solitaire and the Réunion Swamphen, but the name was taken by Aptornis, a bird described by Richard Owen in 1844. Aphanapteryx means "invisible-wing", but the etymology of bonasia is unclear. Some early accounts refer to Red Rails by the vernacular names for the Hazel Grouse, Tetrastes bonasia, so the name evidently originates there. The name itself perhaps refers to bonasus, meaning "bull" in Latin, or bonum and assum, meaning "good roast". It has also been suggested to be a Latin form of the French word bonasse, meaning simple-minded or good-natured.
More fossils were later found by Theodore Sauzier, who had been commissioned to explore the "historical souvenirs" of Mauritius in 1889. A complete specimen was found by the barber Louis Etienne Thirioux who also found important Dodo remains.
Apart from being a close relative of the Rodrigues Rail, the relationships of the Red Rail are uncertain. The two are commonly kept as separate genera, Aphanapteryx and Erythromachus, but have also been united as species of Aphanapteryx at times. They were first generically synonymised by Edward Newton and Albert Günther in 1879, due to skeletal similarities. Based on geographic location and the morphology of the nasal bones, it has been suggested that they were related to the genera Gallirallus, Dryolimnas, Atlantisia, and Rallus. Rails have reached many oceanic archipelagos, which has frequently lead to speciation and evolution of flightnessness.
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