What did Haast's eagle look like?

Discussion about the evolution, relationships, and naming of New Zealand birds
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Michael Szabo
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What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Michael Szabo » Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:49 pm

These comparative sketches showing a Haast's eagle skull and bill alongside various Old World vulture species and wedge-tailed eagle are worth checking out.

Sketches: https://whanganuiregionalmuseum.files.w ... sketch.jpg

Full blog post: https://whanganuiregionalmuseum.wordpre ... comment-93
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Jan
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Jan » Tue Feb 24, 2015 11:12 am

I'm sure Mike Dickison knows quite well the very large model Haast's Eagle on the wall of Canterbury Museum.
And why shouldn't it be called after Haast? The bones came from the S Island and east of the Alps was the bird's range.
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Michael Szabo
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Michael Szabo » Tue Feb 24, 2015 11:15 pm

Interestingly this Maori 'rock pictograph' drawn with charcoal on limestone at Craigmore in South Canterbury appears to show a large winged raptor in flight with a relatively white 'vulturine' head and elongated bill contrasting the dark body and wings:
http://www.teara.govt.nz/files/45529-pc.jpg
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Byrd
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Byrd » Wed Feb 25, 2015 8:17 am

Jan wrote:I'm sure Mike Dickison knows quite well the very large model Haast's Eagle on the wall of Canterbury Museum.
And why shouldn't it be called after Haast? The bones came from the S Island and east of the Alps was the bird's range.

I think the author was suggesting that Haast named the eagle after himself, which I don't think was the case at all. I haven't read Haast's original paper but I suspect the common name was attached later simply because he was the describer.

I didn't think the article was particularly well written myself.
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Michael Szabo
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Michael Szabo » Thu Feb 26, 2015 8:40 am

I just checked George Watola's account of the naming. He says that Julius von Haast first named it Harpagornis moorei after George Henry Moore, owner of Glenmark Swamp in North Canterbury where the type material was found. So it seems that Julius von Haast did not give it the name "Haast's eagle" and that the name refers to Haast as the person who first described the species.

http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/haasts-eagle
Last edited by Michael Szabo on Fri Feb 27, 2015 8:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Neil Fitzgerald
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Thu Feb 26, 2015 11:56 am

Shouldn't we call it Moore's eagle?
Ian Southey
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Ian Southey » Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:57 am

Haast's eagle could be called all sorts of things but if you keep changing it no one will know what anybody else is talking about.

Haast called the thing (Moore's Eagle in translation more or less), I just looked up Oliver and he called it Greater Extinct Eagle in English but more recently somebody obviously felt Haast's eagle was better and this is how most people know it now.

Ian
Alan Tennyson
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Alan Tennyson » Fri Mar 27, 2015 11:58 pm

I'm pretty sure that Richard Holdaway came up with the name "Haast's eagle".
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Paul Scofield » Sat Mar 28, 2015 9:40 am

When giving a species an honourific common English name it is convention to either honour the describer i.e. Haast or the person the species honours in the scientific name i.e Moore. There is no rule. If life was fair the species should be named after the true discoverer Fuller who worked for Haast and recognised the bones as being from a giant Eagle.

My five cents: Harpagornis to me seems a perfectly good "English" name. It is no longer the valid scientific name as the species has been shown to nest within Aquila.

Paul













Haast descibed Harpagornis
Ian Southey
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Re: What did Haast's eagle look like?

Postby Ian Southey » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:45 pm

I have just been looking at a couple of papers on the relationships of eagles that include Haast's Eagle - https://pgl.soe.ucsc.edu/eagle_bunce05.pdf and http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/vie ... a.4216.4.1.

The first is the older paper and includes a picture showing the big difference in the size of the leg bones. The second is about the relationships of eagles redefining the genera and putting Haast's Eagle back into Hieraaetus which differs from the checklist (Aquila) - due to a different conception of how the eagles are related to each other.

Ian

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