The Amsterdam Albatross or Amsterdam Island Albatross, Diomedea amsterdamensis, is a huge albatross which breeds only on Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean. It was only described in 1983, and was thought by some researchers to be a sub-species of the Wandering Albatross, exulans. BirdLife International recognizes it as a species, Clements does not, and the SACC has a proposal on the table to split the species. More recently, mitchondrial DNA comparisons between the Amsterdam Albatross, the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans, the Antipodean Albatross D. antipodensis and the Tristan Albatross D. dabbenena, provide clear genetic evidence that the Amsterdam Albatross is a separate species.
Read more about Amsterdam Albatross: Taxonomy, Etymology, Range and Habitat, Description, Behaviour, Conservation
Famous quotes containing the word amsterdam:
“The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock.”
—Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926)