History
Archeological work has revealed that Xenicus lyalli was widespread on the main islands of New Zealand in earlier times. Its disappearance from there was probably due to predation by the kiore (Polynesian Rat, Rattus exulans), which may have been introduced by the Māori. The presence of a flightless bird on an island separated from the mainland by 3.2 km may seem puzzling, along with the presence of Hamilton's frog (which is killed by exposure to salt water). One possibility is that rafts of vegetable matter allowed them to cross, although the absence of kiore would then be surprising. Stephens Island, along with the other islands in the Marlborough Sounds, was joined to the mainland during the last ice age due to the lower sea level, so the native animals may have arrived then.
Read more about this topic: Stephens Island Wren
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)