Formerly extinct bird species comes back from the dead

A previously extinct species of bird has made a miraculous return from the dead.

The white-throated rail previously inhabited the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean, but died off around 136,000 years ago after the island disappeared below the sea, reports CNN. But scientists have now found the bird has reappeared after sea levels declined several thousand years later, and it still inhabits the island today.

Scientists deem this phenomenon iterative evolution, per CNN, where a species repeatedly evolves from the same ancestor. This marks one of the "most significant" instances of it occurring in a bird species, reports CNN.

In both instances, the rail colonized the island and evolved to be flightless due to a lack of competing predators.