A large fruit-eating bird from Tonga joins the dodo in the lineup of giant island pigeons hunted to extinction. Fossils show that Tongoenas burleyi, a newly described genus and species, inhabited the Pacific islands for at least 60,000 years, but vanished within a century or two of human arrival around 2,850 years ago.

Tongoenas burleyi, right, likely featured the brightly colored plumage of other canopy-dwelling
 pigeons on the…

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Source: archeo