2002/12/01 by Richard N. Holdaway, Martin Jones, Nancy R. Beavan Athfield · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/03014223.2002.9517714
openalex publication_date 2002/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
Abstract The New Zealand owlet‐nightjar (Aegotheles novaezealandiae) was a small (c. 150 g), almost flightless endemic bird that was widely distributed before human settlement. It was extinct before European settlement and has not so far been found definitely in a Polynesian cultural context. A series of accelerator mass spectrometry 14 C ages on gelatin from owlet‐nightjar bones from non‐cultural deposits was analysed using Bayesian statistics. The results indicate that the owlet‐nightjar may have begun to decline before Polynesian settlement. Such a decline would be consistent with the effects of predation by a new predator—most probably the Pacific rat Rattus exulans.