[2] By the 19th century, the bird was known only from a few contemporary descriptions referring to red "hens" and names otherwise used for grouse or partridges in Europe, as well as the sketches of the Dutch merchant Pieter van den Broecke and the English traveller Sir Thomas Herbert from 1646 and 1634.

[3][2] The Belgian scientist Edmond de Sélys Longchamps coined the scientific name Apterornis bonasia based on the old accounts mentioned by Strickland.

[4][5][2] The name Apterornis had already been used for a different extinct bird genus from New Zealand (originally spelled Aptornis, the adzebills) by the British biologist Richard Owen earlier in 1848.

[6] In 1968, the Austrian naturalist Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld brought attention to paintings by the Flemish artist Jacob Hoefnagel depicting animals in the royal menagerie of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, including a dodo and a bird he named Aphanapteryx imperialis.

[7][5][2] In 1865, subfossil foot bones and a lower jaw were found along with remains of other Mauritian animals in the Mare aux Songes swamp, and were sent by the British ornithologists Edward Newton to the French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards, who identified them as belonging to a rail in 1868.

[11] More fossils were later found by the French naturalist Theodore Sauzier, who had been commissioned to explore the "historical souvenirs" of Mauritius in 1889, and these were described by Newton and the German ornithologist Hans F. Gadow in 1893.

[2][13] The yellowish colouration mentioned by English traveller Peter Mundy in 1638 instead of the red of other accounts was used by the Japanese ornithologist Masauji Hachisuka in 1937 as an argument for this referring to a distinct genus and species, Kuina mundyi (the generic name means "water-rail" in Japanese), but the American ornithologist Storrs L. Olson suggested in 1977 that it was possibly due to the observed bird being a juvenile red rail.

Based on geographic location and the morphology of the nasal bones, Olson suggested that they were related to the genera Gallirallus, Dryolimnas, Atlantisia, and Rallus.

According to the British researchers Anthony S. Cheke and Julian P. Hume in 2008, the fact that the red rail lost much of its feather structure indicates it was isolated for a long time.

In general, rails are adept at colonising islands, and can become flightless within few generations in suitable environments, for example without predators, yet this also makes them vulnerable to human activities.

[12] The Dutch ornithologist Marc Herremans suggested in 1989 that the red and Rodrigues rails were neotenic, with juvenile features such as weak pectoral apparatuses and downy plumage.

Their fethers are like down, and their wings so little that it is not able to support their bodies; but they have long leggs and will runn very fast, and that a man shall not catch them, they will turn so about in the trees.

[11][2] In addition, there are three rather crude black-and-white sketches, but differences in them were enough for some authors to suggest that each image depicted a distinct species, leading to the creation of several scientific names which are now synonyms.

[23] An illustration in van den Broecke's 1646 account (based on his stay on Mauritius in 1617) shows a red rail next to a dodo and a one-horned goat, but is not referenced in the text.

An illustration in Herbert's 1634 account (based on his stay in 1629) shows a red rail between a broad-billed parrot and a dodo, and has been referred to as "extremely crude" by Hume.

[27][2] In 1977, the American ornithologist Sidney Dillon Ripley noted a bird resembling a red rail figured in the Italian artist Jacopo Bassano's painting Arca di Noè ("Noah's Ark") from ca.

Cheke pointed out that it is doubtful that a Mauritian bird could have reached Italy this early, but the attribution may be inaccurate, as Bassano had four artist sons who used the same name.

"[32] Milne-Edwards suggested that since the tip of the red rail's bill was sharp and strong, it fed by crushing molluscs and other shells, like oystercatchers do.

There were many endemic land-snails on Mauritius, including the large, extinct Tropidophora carinata, and subfossil shells have been found with puncture holes on their lower surfaces, which suggest predation by birds, probably matching attacks from the beak of the red rail.

[2][15][33] Hume noted that the front of the red rail's jaws were pitted with numerous foramina, running from the nasal aperture to almost the tip of the premaxilla.

While unrelated, these three bird groups share a foraging strategy; they probe for live food beneath substrate, and have elongated bills with clusters of mechanoreceptors concentrated at the tip.

Their armor was their mouth, which was very sharp and pointed; they used it instead of a dagger, were very cowardly and nervous; they did not behave as soldiers at all, and walked in a disorderly manner, one here, the other there, and did not show any faithfulness towards one another.

[34]While it was swift and could escape when chased, it was easily lured by waving a red cloth, which they approached to attack; a similar behaviour was noted in its relative, the Rodrigues rail.

[15]Many other endemic species of Mauritius became extinct after the arrival of humans to the island heavily damaged the ecosystem, making it hard to reconstruct.

[23] The last detailed account of the red rail was by the German pastor Johann Christian Hoffmann, on Mauritius in the early 1670s,[2] who described a hunt as follows: ... [there is also] a particular sort of bird known as toddaerschen which is the size of an ordinary hen.

[30] The British ornithologist Alfred Newton (brother of Edward) suggested in 1868 that the name of the dodo was transferred to the red rail after the former had gone extinct.

[15] The British writer Errol Fuller has also cast the 1662 "dodo" sighting in doubt, as the reaction to distress cries of the birds mentioned matches what was described for the red rail.

[39] 230 years before Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the appearance of the red rail and the dodo led Mundy to speculate: Of these 2 sorts off fowl afforementionede, For oughtt wee yett know, Not any to bee Found out of this Iland, which lyeth aboutt 100 leagues From St. Lawrence.

[2] In addition to hunting pressure by humans, the fact that the red rail nested on the ground made it vulnerable to pigs and other introduced animals, which ate their eggs and young, probably contributing to its extinction, according to Cheke.

[23][40] Feral cats, which are effective predators of ground-inhabiting birds, were established on Mauritius around the late 1680s (to control rats), and this has been cause for rapid disappearance of rails elsewhere, for example on Aldabra Atoll.