3-573: The Marquesas swamphen ( Porphyrio paepae ) is an extinct species of swamphen from the Marquesas Islands Hiva Oa and Tahuata . It was originally described from 600-year-old subfossil remains from Tahuata and Hiva Oa . It may have survived to around 1900; in the lower right corner of Paul Gauguin 's 1902 painting Le Sorcier d'Hiva Oa ou le Marquisien à la cape rouge there is a bird which resembles native descriptions of Porphyrio paepae . Thor Heyerdahl claimed to have seen
6-461: A similar flightless bird on Hiva Oa in 1937. Porphyrio See text Notornis Porphyrula Porphyrio is the swamphen or swamp hen bird genus in the rail family . It includes some smaller species of gallinules which are sometimes separated as genus Porphyrula or united with the gallinules proper (or "moorhens") in Gallinula . The Porphyrio gallinules are distributed in
9-924: The warmer regions of the world. The group probably originated in Africa in the Middle Miocene, before spreading across the world in waves from the Late Miocene to Pleistocene. The genus Porphyrio was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the western swamphen ( Porphyrio porphyrio ) as the type species . The genus name Porphyrio is the Latin name for "swamphen", meaning " purple ". The genus contains ten extant species and two that have become extinct in historical times: This Gruiformes -related article
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