Chatham Islands, New Zealand

Very few museum specimens of the Chatham Island taiko exist. The type specimen (called the magenta petrel) is held in the Turin Regional Natural Science Museum in Italy, having been collected in the south-eastern  pactifc by His Italian Majesty's ship Magenta on July 22, 1867.  No other taiko specimens are known to be held by any other overseas museum and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand holds one adult study skin and one mounted juvenile.

Recently Paul Scofield of Canterbury Museum discovered what appeared to be a mounted taiko specimen in the Canterbury Museum collection, however it was labelled as a Tahiti petrel.  The only information on the origin of the specimen is that it was collected in the Pacific Ocean and has been in the Canterbury Museum collection since at least 1910.

Hayley Lawrence of Massey University was able to compare the DNA of this bird to the original magenta petrel with blood samples taken from Chatham Island taiko and confirm that they were all of the same species.