November 2021 – Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives

The scientists shield their eyes from the howling wind and flying sand as they carefully uncover the precious skeleton. If it wasn’t for the absence of giant sandworms, this could have been a scene straight out of Dune.

Alex Verry and Matt Schmidt are on Rakiura Stewart Island at West Ruggedy Beach excavating a significant taonga, a moa skeleton. Surrounding them are high, steep-sided golden sand dunes draped over granite tors that stick up out of the dunes like the emergent peaks of buried mountains. Just over the water, tantalizingly close, is the kākāpō stronghold of Whenua Hou Codfish Island.

*Buried taonga: In a scene from Dune, Matt and Alex uncovered the Rakiura moa (foreground) that had been lost to the mists of time. Photo by Alex Verry.*

The partial moa is resting in a natural granite bowl, which no doubt protected it for hundreds of years from being completely eroded away. Amazingly, underneath the skeleton were gizzard stones, used by the moa to grind up plant matter, and a dark brown organic-rich sand, stained by the rotting flesh and the moa’s last meal. Crucially, there were no cut marks on the bones to suggest butchery, nor any associated cultural material. This all screamed only one thing, something nearly as rare as moa’s teeth on Rakiura, a natural moa that died where it lay! Continue reading “The mystery of the moa: did these feathered giants call Rakiura Stewart Island home?”

In the bowels of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the little frog waited. In 2005 scientists had released its bones from its sediment tomb on the banks of the Waipara River in North Canterbury.

The discoverers – Bruce Marshall, Phil Maxwell, and Al Mannering – had carefully collected the tiny bones that remained and deposited them in the museum where they were identified as belonging to a frog before they were gently packed away. There the little frog waited like a heirloom toy waiting for the next generation of scientists to rediscover and treasure it.

A few years later the lid was lifted on the little frogs’ new home. Its bones were carefully taken from its box and placed under the microscope. Every bump and groove was described in detail and compared to other frogs from around Aotearoa New Zealand. Continue reading “The little frog with a big legacy”