Integration of palaeontological, historical, and geographical data on the extinction of koa‐finches | Semantic Scholar

Hawaiian honeycreepers, comprising an endemic radiation of passerine birds in the Hawaiian archipelago, have suffered losses of individual island populations and the extinction of many species as a result of colonization by Polynesians and introduced avian pox virus and avian malaria.

Bones from a stratified sedimentary deposit in the Puu Naio Cave site on Maui, Hawaiian Islands, reveal the late Holocene extinction of 19 species of birds, indicating that sediment has been accumulating in the lava tube for at least the last 7750 years, a suitable time frame for testing the hypothesis thatHolocene extinction on islands began after human colonization.