Dominican Green-and-Yellow Macaw | |
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Created by Peter Maas for The Extinction Website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence. | |
Information | |
Common Name | atwood's macaw and dominican macaw |
Range | Dominica |
Scientific Classification | |
Kingdom | Animalia |
Phylum | Chordata |
Class | Aves |
Order | Psittaciformes |
Family | Psittacidae |
Genus | Ara |
Species | †A. atwoodi |
Conservation Status | |
Extinct |
The Dominican Green-and-Yellow Macaw or Atwood's Macaw (Ara atwoodi), also called the Dominican Macaw, is extinct, and only known through the writings of zoologist Thomas Atwood in 1791. Atwood wrote of a macaw from Dominica with green and yellow plumage and "a scarlet coloured fleshy substance from the ears to the root of the bill." No archeological remains are known of this bird, and it is thus widely considered an extinct hypothetically existent parrot. Atwood described a bird which was commonly captured for food and pets.
Austin Hobart Clark, the zoologist and binomial authority on the parrot, initially included these macaws in Ara guadeloupensis. On discovering Atwood's writings, however, Clark listed them separately, considering them distinct
The Dominican Macaw probably became extinct in the late 18th or early 19th century.