Yelkouan shearwater Menorca. A study of these birds recommended that a combination of morphological characteristics and DNA sequence data should be required at least for scientific purposes to assign individual birds to either species. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the Manx shearwater (see there for more on the "Puffinus puffinus" superspecies). After the first split, it was the nominate subspecies of the so-called "Mediterranean shearwater" for nearly ten more years; it is considered a monotypic species now, as the Balearic form "mauretanicus" has been separated as the Balearic shearwater. The yelkouan shearwater appears to belong to a group of Mediterranean
Scarlett's shearwater Scarlett's shearwater Scarlett's shearwater ("Puffinus spelaeus") is an extinct species of seabird in the petrel family Procellariidae. Its common name commemorates New Zealand palaeontologist Ron Scarlett, who recognised the bird's subfossil remains represented a distinct species. This bird was described from bones collected in 1991 from a cave near the Fox River in the South Island of New Zealand. Subsequent discoveries of bones dating from 20,000 years ago to less than 600 years old reveal it was found only in the west and northwest of the South Island, in Northwest Nelson and Buller. Scarlett's shearwater was closely related to the