Moa

Family Anomalopterygidae

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Anomalopteryx

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Euryapteryx

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Megalapteryx

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Family Dinornithidae

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Dinornis

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Emeus

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Pachyornis

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The moa are the giant flightless birds of New Zealand. Ten species are known, of varying sizes, with the largest species, the Giant Moa (Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae), reaching about three metres (ten feet) in height and about 250 kilograms (550 pounds) in mass. They were the dominant herbivores in the forest ecosystem.

Related Topics:
Bird - New Zealand - Giant Moa - Metre - Feet - Kilo - Gram - Pound - Herbivore - Ecosystem

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Moa became extinct around the year 1500. Although it used to be thought that numbers were declining before the impact of humans, their extinction is now attributed entirely to hunting and forest clearance by the Polynesian ancestors of Māori, who had settled New Zealand a few hundred years earlier. Before the arrival of humans, moa were hunted by Harpagornis, the world's largest eagle, which is also now extinct. The kiwi was once regarded as a close relative of the Moa, but comparisons of their DNA suggest it is more closely related to the Australian emu and cassowary.

Related Topics:
1500 - Māori - Harpagornis - Kiwi - Emu - Cassowary

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Although the indigenous Māori told European settlers tales about the huge birds which they called Moa, which had once roamed the flats and valleys, the widespread physical evidence that they had actually existed was never closely examined by early European settlers.

Related Topics:
Indigenous - Māori

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In 1839, John W. Harris, a Poverty Bay flax trader who was a natural history enthusiast, was given a piece of unusual bone by a Māori who had found it in a river bank. He showed the 15cm fragment of bone to his uncle, John Rule, a Sydney surgeon, who sent it to Richard Owen who at that time was working at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Owen became a noted biologist, anatomist and paleontologist at the British Museum.

Related Topics:
1839 - John W. Harris - Richard Owen - Royal College of Surgeons - London - Biologist - Anatomist - Paleontologist - British Museum

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Owen puzzled over the fragment for almost four years. He established it was part of the femur of a big animal, but it was uncharacteristically light and honeycombed.

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Owen announced to a skeptical scientific community and the world that it was from a giant extinct bird like an ostrich, and named it "Dinornis". His deduction was ridiculed in some quarters but was proved correct with the subsequent discoveries of considerable quantities of moa bones throughout the land, sufficient to construct skeletons of the birds.

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Although dozens of species were described in the late 19th and early 20th century, many were based on partial skeletons and turned out to be synonyms. More recent research, based on DNA recovered from museum collections, suggest that there were only ten species, including two giant moa. The giant moa seems to have had sexual dimorphism, with females being much larger than males; so much bigger that they were formerly classified as separate species. The Giant Moa grew as large as 13 feet and became extinct much earlier (also by Maori hunting), about 1300.

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In July 2004, the Natural History Museum in London placed on display the moa bone fragment Owen had first examined, to celebrate 200 years since his birth, and in memory of Owen as founder of the museum.

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