Tag: moa

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”

The mystery of the moa: did these feathered giants call Rakiura Stewart Island home?

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?”

Land of the chonky birds: How and why did New Zealand have so many feathered giants?

The eastern moa is stuck fast in the swamp, its thick legs having punched through the peat into the liquid blue clay beneath. Death is inevitable, whether from starvation or from above.

Unable to move, the moa can only eat what it can reach around it, if anything. The forests that covered this area during warmer times are but a dim memory in the recesses of time. Instead, the swamp is surrounded by tussock grass and celery pine. Occasionally the moa tries to escape in vain from the swamp’s tight grasp, bumping against the bones of its brethren preserved in this death trap.

Suddenly, something slams into the back of the moa, pushing it further into the swamp. Large talons rip through flesh and bone. The moa’s arch-nemesis, the King of the Eagles, has just arrived for dinner. Continue reading “Land of the chonky birds: How and why did New Zealand have so many feathered giants?”

Footprints illuminate the Dark Age of moa evolution

A moa walks across a vast flood plain, its feet sinking into the soft mud. Once buried by the next flood, the footprints left behind harden. Millions of years later, a farmhand taking the dogs for a swim on a hot day makes the discovery of a lifetime.

Seven footprints, around 25 cm in diameter, were recently discovered in the bed of the Kye Burn River, near Ranfurly, exposed after summer flooding. Such is the importance of this discovery, they represent the first moa trackway for the South Island and potentially the oldest in Aotearoa New Zealand. Thanks to the hard work of Otago Museum and scientists from the University of Otago’s Geology Department, this ara-moa has been saved from being erased from our biological heritage forever.

Continue reading “Footprints illuminate the Dark Age of moa evolution”

How to make a flightless bird

Visit any major museum in Aotearoa New Zealand and you will see a giant moa skeleton on display. The first thing you notice, apart from its enormous size, is the complete lack of wing bones. The answer to how the tūpuna of moa arrived on our shores and subsequently lost their wings has been one of New Zealand’s greatest evolutionary mysteries.

Pin the wings on the moa….what wings? The South Island giant moa skeleton in the entrance of Canterbury Museum that so fascinated my five-year-old palaeontologist.

Moa, and our other national bird, the kiwi, are members of an ancient super group of birds called palaeognaths (derived from the Greek for ‘old jaws’, referring to the primitive-looking roof of their mouth), very different to their evolutionary rivals, the neognaths (new jaw) that include all other birds alive today. Continue reading “How to make a flightless bird”

Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode

In a rockshelter at the base of a giant two-storey house-sized boulder, Jamie and Janet strike pay dirt. A few centimetres under the floor of this dry overhang are the tell tale signs of a prehistoric megafaunal latrine.

We’re going on a moa hunt: bones and coprolites can be found under giant boulders like this one. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.

Jamie Wood and Janet Wilmshurst, from Maanaki Whenua Landcare Research, are deep within an ancient Fangorn-like forest at Daley’s Flat in the upper reaches of the Dart River Valley. Snow-capped mountains, tall enough to make you feel quite insignificant in the geological timescale, surround this U-shaped glacial valley.

The floor of this goblin forest, dominated by red and mountain beech, is carpeted in a thick blanket of moss. Put a foot wrong and you’re likely to fall down a crevasse into the dark unknown. Starting life as an epic rock avalanche brought down by an Alpine Fault rupture at least 1000 years ago (in what turns out to be the only case in the world of using prehistoric bird poo to date an earthquake), the area is now home to some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s precious and picturesque indigenous forest, relatively untouched by humans. It has escaped Polynesian and European burning, climate change, forestry and agriculture. The biggest risk are the pesky deer, which leave distinct browse lines in the forest understory – everything palatable below the line has been eaten out. Continue reading “Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode”

Are deer the new moa: Ecosystem re-wilding or a flight of fancy?

It’s the depths of winter and I’m squatting in the snow, surrounded by southern beech forest, using a pair of tweezers to pick up fresh steaming deer poo.

Pooper scooper: Braving the cold in the name of science, these deer droppings are a harbinger of a changing world. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.

My wife Maria, and palaeoecologist Jamie Wood, from Landcare Research, are doubled over in laughter, having just given me the official job title of pooper scooper.

We’re helping Jamie collect deer poo as part of a project investigating whether introduced deer fill the same job vacancy as the extinct moa in what remains of our unique ecosystems – an ecological surrogate to re-wild New Zealand.

This long-running and often vitriolic debate has become closely associated with the anti-1080 movement. Hunters have illegally re-introduced deer into national parks and other protected conservation areas, sometimes where they had previously been eradicated. An uproar ensues whenever a potential deer cull is floated by DOC.

So how did this feathers to fur debate start and can the latest Time Lord science help shed some light on it? Continue reading “Are deer the new moa: Ecosystem re-wilding or a flight of fancy?”

Through the looking glass: Fossils reveal a Miocene Wonderland at St Bathans

It’s the height of the Central Otago summer – barren, dry and dusty. Driving down the gravel road to St Bathans, we’re travelling back in time, down the rabbit hole to a world long gone. Only ghosts remain of this lost world and that’s what we’ve come here to find. The fossilised bones of a myriad of animals dating back some 16-19 million years from the Miocene period can be found in the sediments of the surrounding area. Continue reading “Through the looking glass: Fossils reveal a Miocene Wonderland at St Bathans”