 English zoologist George Robert Gray assigned some eclectus parrot ("Eclectus roratus") subspecies from the Moluccas to "Mascarinus" in his book "A List of the Genera of Birds" from the 1840s, but this idea was soon dismissed by other writers.Subfossil parrot remains were later excavated from grottos on Réunion and reported in 1996.X-rays of the two existing stuffed Mascarene parrots made it possible to compare the remaining bones with the subfossils and showed these were intermediate in measurements in comparison to the modern specimens.