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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

In 2001, Trevor Worthy described a set of bones from Fiji as a new species of very large, flightless pigeon: the Viti Levu Giant Pigeon ( Natunaornis gigoura ). A large, extinct relative of the (barely) extant Tooth-billed Pigeon described above was described in 2006 from remains found in Tonga ( Steadman 2006 ).

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Regarding Kakariki

10,000 Birds

It was long expected that the fossil record would show extinct members of the genus in the islands between New Zealand/New Caledonia and the Society Islands (places like Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands) that had gone extinct before Europeans arrived, but no such fossils have been found.