Spectacled cormorant

Spectacled cormorant
Illustration by Joseph Wolf

Extinct (c. 1850)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Suliformes
Family: Phalacrocoracidae
Genus: Urile
Species:
†U. perspicillatus
Binomial name
†Urile perspicillatus
(Pallas, 1811)
Synonyms
  • Phalacrocorax perspicillatus
    Pallas, 1811
  • Graculus perspicillatus
    Elliot, 1869
  • Pallasicarbo perspicillatus
    Coues, 1869
  • Carbo perspicillatus
    Rothschild, 1907
  • Compsohalieus perspicillatus

The spectacled cormorant or Pallas's cormorant (Urile perspicillatus)[2] is an extinct marine bird of the cormorant family of seabirds that inhabited Bering Island and possibly other places in the Commander Islands and the nearby coast of Kamchatka in the far northeast of Russia.[1] The modern distribution was shown to be a relic of a wider prehistoric distribution in 2018 when fossils of the species from 120,000 years ago were found in Japan. It is the largest species of cormorant known to have existed.[3]

  1. ^ a b BirdLife International (2023). "Urile perspicillatus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2023: e.T22696750A226827998. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T22696750A226827998.en.
  2. ^ Phalacrocorax, Ancient Greek word for cormorants (literally "bald raven"). perspicillatus, Latin for "spectacled", in allusion of the birds' large size.
  3. ^ Watanabe, Junya; Matsuoka, Hiroshige; Hasegawa, Yoshikazu (October 2018). "Pleistocene fossils from Japan show that the recently extinct Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) was a relict". The Auk. 135 (4): 895–907. doi:10.1642/AUK-18-54.1. hdl:2433/233910. S2CID 91465582.