Plate from Comte de Buffon 's encyclopaedia

Plate from Comte de Buffon 's encyclopaedia
Histoire Naturelle , 1700s
In 2012, Leo Joseph and colleagues acknowledged the finding but pointed out that the sample might have been damaged and that further testing was needed before the issue could be fully resolved. They also noted that if
Mascarinus was confirmed to be embedded within the genus Coracopsis , the latter would become a junior synonym, since the former name is older. [16] In 2012, Hume expressed surprise at these findings due to the anatomical similarities between the Mascarene parrot and other parrots from the Mascarene islands that are believed to be psittaculines. He also pointed out that there is no fossil evidence found on other islands to support the hypothesis that the species evolved elsewhere before reaching Réunion. [8]
In 2017, Lars Podsiadlowski and colleagues sampled the Vienna specimen for a new genetic study and found that the Mascarene parrot was indeed part of the Psittacula group as suggested by Hume, clustering with the extinct
Seychelles parakeet (P. wardi ) and Asian subspecies of the Alexandrine parakeet (P. eupatria). The Mascarene parrot was therefore interpreted as having descended from an ancestral lineage of Alexandrine parakeets that had dispersed from Asia towards the Mascarene islands across the Indian Ocean. The researchers suggested that the 2011 genetic study had probably used a composite of sequences from two other parrot species sampled for the study (including a lesser vasa parrot), a result of contamination during laboratory procedures. The 2017 study also found that the parrots of the genus Tanygnathus were grouped among
Psittacula parrots, and proposed that Tanygnathus and Mascarinus should therefore be merged into the genus
Psittacula . The cladogram accompanying the 2017 study is shown below:[17]
Mascarinus mascarin
Psittacula wardi (Seychelles , extinct)
Psittacula eupatria nipalensis (Central Asia )
Psittacula eupatria magnirostris (Andaman Islands )
Psittacula eupatria siamensis (Southea