Tag: ice age

It’s a Friday night in Invercargill for eastern moa during the Ice Age

In the depths of winter, most people from southern New Zealand head to warmer climes for a much-needed dose of Vitamin D. Yet during the height of the last Ice Age, one species of moa did just the opposite. 

I’m reminded of Bill Bailey’s En Route to Normal tour that visited Dunedin last year where he was performing one of his great comedic songs. On this night he was singing about being at a dark deserted crossroads, framed by a lone street light, with only a kiwi for company. The punchline, delivered to peels of laughter from the audience, is that it was a Friday night in Invercargill. This comically disparaged city is New Zealand’s southernmost, just a few hours down the road from here, and the butt of many local jokes. I strongly suspect Bill’s song was about Dunedin when performing for his Invercargill fans. Continue reading “It’s a Friday night in Invercargill for eastern moa during the Ice Age”

From the smallest of bones come the biggest of secrets

Ask any museum curator if you could destroy the only known bone of a diminutive extinct animal for genetic research, and the answer, once the curator had regained their composure…well, I’ll leave that one to your imagination.

Walk into the behind-the-scenes collection at any museum in Aotearoa New Zealand and you’re immediately drawn to the big things, whether that’s historical taxidermy, like imposing carnivores with their glassy eyes that eerily follow you around the room, or the skeletons of marine leviathans that once explored the ocean’s depths. Yet tucked away, dwarfed by the adjacent shelves upon shelves of carefully curated moa drumsticks, is a single non-descript wax-lined box full of tiny treasures. Hundreds of precious fossil gecko bones from before the arrival of humans, some thousands of years old. Continue reading “From the smallest of bones come the biggest of secrets”

The long night: how the Ice Age drove blue-eyed shag evolution

The first snow had started to settle on the bare ground. Soon the shag will have to make a choice.

Should it stay to battle the elements and potentially face death during the long night, or attempt a perilous journey to find a new home? By the time sea-ice surrounds its craggy island, creeping up from the south like an army of white walkers, it may be too late.

Beware white walkers: Chatham Island shags (L. onslowi) on watch at the refugial Rēkohu Chatham Islands. Photo courtesy of Oscar Thomas.

Scientists know a lot about how the Ice Age affected animals in the landlocked Northern Hemisphere. Vast kilometre-high ice sheets covered large parts of Eurasia and North America. Animals migrated into refugia and when the ice finally released its cold grip on the world, they expanded back out again. It’s practically the plot of the Ice Age movies. Continue reading “The long night: how the Ice Age drove blue-eyed shag evolution”