NATURAL HISTORY · CATALOGUE RECORD
Ascension Crake
Mundia elpenor (Olson, 1973)
Source-backed taxonomic record
Accepted species in Catalogue of Life’s 11 September 2026 base release. This preserves the source classification and available supporting data; it is not a completed species monograph.
Drawing of the Ascension crake by Peter Mundy in 1656 on his visit to Ascension Island. This appears to be the original version of the drawing as it has sourcing. The one uploaded earlier is clearly distinct in some details, but has the same overall pose, and appears to be derived from this one. Vectorised as the image in the pdf had blurs around parts of the image
Peter Mundy · Public domain · Image sourceProvider-generated thumbnail requested at 800 pixels; no local editing Local WebP display rendition; resized without cropping.
Open encyclopedia reference
The Ascension crake (Mundia elpenor) is an extinct flightless bird that previously lived on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Like many other flightless birds on isolated islands, it was a rail. It was declared extinct by Groombridge in 1994; BirdLife International confirmed this in 2000 and 2004. The bird was endemic to Ascension Island. Numerous subfossil bones of the bird have been found in deposits at the base of vertical fumaroles. Peter Mundy, a 17th-century merchant and traveler gave an account of the bird and made a sketch of it when he visited Ascension Island in June 1656. It was described by Mundy as: a strange kind of fowle, much bigger then our sterlings ore stares: collour gray or dappled, white and blacke feathers intermixed, eies red like rubies, wings very imperfitt, such as wherewith they cannot raise themselves from the ground.
Wikipedia contributors, Ascension crake; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T04:37:00.521552+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.
Identity & source status
- Scientific name
- Mundia elpenor (Olson, 1973)
- Name authority
- (Olson, 1973)
- Common name
- Ascension Crake
- Rank
- species
- Accepted status
- accepted
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Gruiformes
- Family
- Rallidae
- Genus
- Mundia
- Extinction status
- Recorded extinct
Classification family tree
Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.
- domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
- kingdomAnimalia
- phylumChordata
- subphylumVertebrata
- infraphylumGnathostomata
- parvphylumOsteichthyes
- megaclassTetrapoda
- classAves
- orderGruiformes
- familyRallidae
- genusMundia Bourne, Ashmole & Simmons, 2003
- speciesMundia elpenor (Olson, 1973)
Close classified relatives
No other member of this genus is present in the selected snapshot.
Names & synonyms
Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.
| Recorded name | Source status |
|---|---|
| Atlantisia elpenor Olson, 1973 Olson, 1973 | synonym |
Documented distribution
Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.
Source literature & publication evidence
References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.
- https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=1244227 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references
Origins, evidence & remaining research
Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.
Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.
Dataset citation & attribution
This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11
Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.
Stable key: col:CP4V3. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.