I watched a programme on TV the other night, 'Primeval NZ' or some such. They described how New Zealand separated from Gondwanaland a zillion years ago and drifted around in the wide ocean, mostly sank, volcanoed and earthquaked itself silly, and then decided it needed a little more space from Oz and surreptitiously started this slow sidle off to the east.
Throw in a few ice ages and I suppose it's not that much of a stretch to understand how the all the mammals hitching a ride off the mega-continent died off until pretty much all that was left was just earthworms, amphibians, and insects, freeing NZ up to become this exclusive birds-only club.
One day some birds flew in from across the proto-Tasman, decided this would do just fine, and got right to work adapting to their environment. They diverged into two distinct species, both of which independently became flightless but followed rather different evolutionary trajectories: the kiwi and the moa.
Kiwis are rare today, and moas are of course extinct (and presumably tasty, as their demise coincided nearly perfectly with the arrival of man). But they left some very cool remains.
Here is a model of a giant moa--nine feet tall!
This is the heavy-footed moa. He's about four feet tall and is probably my favourite display on this entire floor of the museum. He makes me think of jackalopes or the Feejee Mermaid, because he looks so absurdly disproportionate that I halfway reckon he's actually made of two different birds kind of stapled together just to have us on. I like thinking about what it would have been like to turn a corner and find a flock of these glandular emus stomping toward you. (Dibs on the drumstick!)
Speaking of, here are some drumstick bones. That itty-bitty one at the top is a regular chicken drumstick from dinner, for comparison. Then we we have the moa bones, from top to bottom: coastal, slender bush, stout-legged, heavy-footed, and giant.
Surely you can see the family resemblance in their cousins the kiwis.
Throw in a few ice ages and I suppose it's not that much of a stretch to understand how the all the mammals hitching a ride off the mega-continent died off until pretty much all that was left was just earthworms, amphibians, and insects, freeing NZ up to become this exclusive birds-only club.
One day some birds flew in from across the proto-Tasman, decided this would do just fine, and got right to work adapting to their environment. They diverged into two distinct species, both of which independently became flightless but followed rather different evolutionary trajectories: the kiwi and the moa.
Kiwis are rare today, and moas are of course extinct (and presumably tasty, as their demise coincided nearly perfectly with the arrival of man). But they left some very cool remains.
Here is a model of a giant moa--nine feet tall!
This is the heavy-footed moa. He's about four feet tall and is probably my favourite display on this entire floor of the museum. He makes me think of jackalopes or the Feejee Mermaid, because he looks so absurdly disproportionate that I halfway reckon he's actually made of two different birds kind of stapled together just to have us on. I like thinking about what it would have been like to turn a corner and find a flock of these glandular emus stomping toward you. (Dibs on the drumstick!)
Speaking of, here are some drumstick bones. That itty-bitty one at the top is a regular chicken drumstick from dinner, for comparison. Then we we have the moa bones, from top to bottom: coastal, slender bush, stout-legged, heavy-footed, and giant.
Surely you can see the family resemblance in their cousins the kiwis.
3 comments:
This posting was just amazing with this information and history. Of course, the boys enthusiastic antics were the very best part. I will show Fred the comparison also as he would be very interested in the bones.
What a cool lesson on the natural history of NZ! This made me more curious so I wikied up Moas at
and learned lots more about them. Did you know that they don't even have vestigial wings so scientists aren't sure how their ancestors arrived in NZ? Did you know that in some of the species "the female was up to 150% as tall and 280% as heavy as males—so much bigger that they were formerly classified as separate species."?
Thank you Allie for helping my brain grow a little bigger!
Love this stuff, always interested in science!!!
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