The bird Aldabra white-throated rail has rebirthed itself twice after going extinct some 1,36,000 years ago.
Scientists have termed it iterative evolution.
It means the repeated evolution of similar or parallel structures from the same ancestor, but at different times.
It is a chicken sized flightless bird that lives in Indian ocean’s Aldabra atoll.
It is indigenous to Madagascar but the fossil of the bird was found in distant Aldabra atoll during
two different time periods
each separated by many thousands of years.
The unique and oldest paleontological record of Aldabra combines with fossil evidence, demonstrates the effects of changing sea levels on extinction and recolonization events.