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
Dune shearwater which bred in lava fields. Extinction of the species occurred about 2000–3000 years ago, contemporaneously with the first human settlement of the islands by the Guanches, with the cause likely to be human predation. Dune shearwater The dune shearwater ("Puffinus holeae"), also known as the Canarian shearwater or Hole's shearwater, was a relatively large shearwater which bred in the Canary Islands archipelago of the North Atlantic Ocean. Fossils have also been found in the Figueira Brava cave archaeological site on the western coast of Portugal. The specific epithet honours Mrs Jean Hole who collected fossil material of the species on