Hypothetical species

A 1722 illustration by Jean-Baptiste Labat of three parrots on Guadeloupe. There are no remains of these parrots and so accurate taxonomic classification is impossible.

Several species have been assumed to exist, but due to a lack of physical evidence they can only be regarded as potential species. Hypothetical species are usually believed to be extinct. They have caused confusion, as they may have been a separate species, a subspecies, an introduced species or a misidentification.^[1]

List of hypothetical species

Birds

• Bird of Washington
• Dominican green-and-yellow macaw
• Eos unicolor
• Gallus giganteus
• Geoffroyus aureus
• Guadeloupe amazon
• Guadeloupe parakeet
• Hypothetical relatives of the Rodrigues parrot
• Jamaican red macaw
• Lesser Antillean macaw
• Lorius tibialis
• Madeira finch
• Martinique amazon
• Martinique macaw
• Painted vulture
• Red-headed macaw
• Réunion swamphen
• Sushkin's goose

Non-avian dinosaurs

• Proavis

Mammals

• Andean wolf
• Bili Ape
• Chilihueque
• Chinese elephant
• Elephant-dung bat
• Giraffa sahara^[2]
• Kallana
• Kting voar
• Long-necked seal
• Marozi
• Tailed slow loris^{[citation needed]}
• Sonnerat's shrew
• Steller's sea ape
• Sumxu
• Unidentified extinct canid populations^[3][4]

Fish

• Abyssal rainbow gar^[5]
• Bathyceratias^[5]
• Bathyembryx^[5]
• Bathysidus^[5]
• Bathysphaera^[5]

Insects

• Battus polydamas antiquus

Microanimals

• Mesotardigrada
• Salinella

Plants

• Laysan fan palm
• Silphium

See also

• Chimera (paleontology)
• Species inquirenda

References

1. Fuller, Errol (1987). Extinct Birds. Penguin Books (England). p. 131. ISBN 0-670-81787-2.
2. Solounias, Nikos (2022-09-27). Anatomy and Evolution of the Giraffe: Parts Unknown (PDF). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 1–6. ISBN 978-1-5275-8686-4. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-06-01.
3. Gopalakrishnan, Shyam; Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S.; Ramos-Madrigal, Jazmín; Niemann, Jonas; Samaniego Castruita, Jose A.; Vieira, Filipe G.; Carøe, Christian; Montero, Marc de Manuel; Kuderna, Lukas; Serres, Aitor; González-Basallote, Víctor Manuel; Liu, Yan-Hu; Wang, Guo-Dong; Marques-Bonet, Tomas; Mirarab, Siavash; Fernandes, Carlos; Gaubert, Philippe; Koepfli, Klaus-Peter; Budd, Jane; Rueness, Eli Knispel; Sillero, Claudio; Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter; Petersen, Bent; Sicheritz-Ponten, Thomas; Bachmann, Lutz; Wiig, Øystein; Hansen, Anders J.; Gilbert, M. Thomas P. (2018). "Interspecific Gene Flow Shaped the Evolution of the Genus Canis". Current Biology. 28 (21): 3441–3449.e5. Bibcode:2018CBio...28E3441G. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.08.041. PMC 6224481. PMID 30344120.
4. Wang, Guo-Dong; Zhang, Ming; Wang, Xuan; Yang, Melinda A.; Cao, Peng; Liu, Feng; Lu, Heng; Feng, Xiaotian; Skoglund, Pontus; Wang, Lu; Fu, Qiaomei; Zhang, Ya-Ping (2019). "Genomic Approaches Reveal an Endemic Subpopulation of Gray Wolves in Southern China". iScience. 20: 110–118. Bibcode:2019iSci...20..110W. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2019.09.008. PMC 6817678. PMID 31563851.
5. Beebe, William (1934). Half Mile Down (PDF). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.