Extinct giant bird of New Zealand. Moas are giant birds. Moa birds - alive or not

Moa birds are a vivid example of what can happen to humanity if the habitat becomes as comfortable as possible and devoid of various threats.

moa history

A long time ago, New Zealand was a paradise on earth for all birds: not a single mammal lived there (except for the bat). No predators, no dinosaurs. Scientists who studied the moa bird found a feather, examined DNA and found out that its first representatives arrived on the islands more than 2000 years ago. These birds were comfortable in the new conditions, because the absence of large predators made their existence very carefree. The only threat to them was only a very large haast eagle. The plumage of the moa was brown with a greenish-yellowish undertone, which served as good camouflage and sometimes protected from this bird of prey.

Moa did not have to fly away from anyone, so their wings atrophied, and later completely disappeared. They moved only on their strong paws. They ate leaves, roots, fruits. Moa evolved under these conditions, and over time there were more than 10 species of these birds. Some were very large: 3 meters in height, weighed more than 200 kg, and the eggs of such individuals reached 30 cm in diameter. Some are smaller: only 20 kg, they called them "bush moas". The females were much larger than the males.

Main cause of extinction

When the Maori arrived on the islands of New Zealand in the 13th and 14th centuries AD, it was the beginning of the end for the moa. These representatives of the Polynesian peoples had only one home animal - dog who helped them hunt. They ate taro, ferns, yams and sweet potatoes, and wingless moa birds were considered a special "tasty". Since the latter did not know how to fly, they became very easy prey.

Scientists believe that the rats brought by the Maori also contributed to the extinction of these birds. Moas are officially considered an extinct species that ceased to exist in the 16th century. However, there is information from eyewitnesses who had the honor to see very large birds in New Zealand in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Moa skeleton reconstruction

Scientists have long been interested in studying the extinct moa bird. There were many skeletons and remains of egg shells on the islands, which, of course, pleased paleontologists, but they could not meet living individuals, although many expeditions were organized to almost all corners of the islands of New Zealand. The first who began to study the history of extinction and examine the remains of these birds was Richard Owen. This famous English zoologist and paleontologist recreated the moa skeleton from the femur, which was a great contribution to the history of the development of vertebrates in general.

Description of the moa bird

The wingless moa birds belong to the moa-like order, the species is dinornis. Their growth can exceed 3 m, weight - from 20 to 240 kg. The moa clutch had only one or two eggs. The color of the shell is white with a beige, greenish or bluish tint. The clutch was incubated for 3 months.

After analyzing the bone tissue, scientists determined that these birds reached puberty after 10 years. Almost like people.

Moa is a keelless bird, its closest relative can be considered a kiwi. In appearance, it is most similar to an ostrich: an elongated neck, a slightly flattened head, and a curved beak.

The moa ate low-growing plants, roots, fruits. He pulled bulbs out of the ground and plucked young shoots. Next to the skeletons of these birds, scientists found pebbles. They suggested that this is the contents of the stomach, because many modern birds also swallow pebbles so that they help crush food, so it is better digested.

New Research

In the middle of the last century, a sensation thundered throughout the world. Allegedly, someone was lucky enough to take a picture of a live moa. It was an article in a British publication, the photo was a blurry silhouette of an unknown feathered one. Later, the deception was exposed, it turned out to be a common fabrication of the media.

However, about twenty years ago, interest in this bird revived again. A naturalist from Australia put forward the idea that these birds can still be found on the islands, but not the large individuals that scientists expected to see, but small moas. He went to the North Island. There he managed to capture several dozen traces of a similar bird. Rex Gilroy - that's the name of the naturalist - cannot claim that the paw prints he saw really belong to moas.

The second scientist refuted Gilroy's guesses, because if these birds are really alive, then there would be much more traces.

Scientists believe that the females of these birds were much larger and heavier than males. In addition, there were more of them. They settled in fertile territories and drove out the "stronger sex" from there.

Moa were a very large population, as evidenced by the abundance of skeletons that have survived to this day.

Some ornithologists believe that these birds lost their ability to fly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, that is, long before they ended up on the islands of New Zealand.

Ancient fossil birds: Dinornis or MOA

• Read more: Are moa birds alive or dead?

In the Quaternary period, a giant bird, the dinornis, also known as the moa, lived in New Zealand. The famous English paleontologist Richard Owen devoted 45 years of his life to the study of this bird.

Dinornis reached a height of 1-3.5 meters, they had a small skull and a short beak. The wings of the bird were reduced, and the shoulder girdle was absent.

In some parts of New Zealand there are large accumulations of the bones of these birds, reminiscent of cemeteries. Not only the bones of these birds were studied, but also mummified soft tissues of the body, feathers and eggs.

In representatives of various genera and species, feathers were colored differently. The eggs also had different colors. Found in 1867 near Cromwell, the egg was 30 centimeters long and 20 centimeters across, indicating a significant size of the eggs.

Of all the genera and species of Dinornis that lived in New Zealand, the most characteristic and largest was Dinornis maximus - a colossus 3.5 meters high.

It has been established that dinornithes are not related to cassowaries or other birds of the Australian fauna. The latest research has shown that their closest relatives are the South American Nandu ostriches (Rheae).

At first glance, this may seem unlikely, but we know from the history of the Earth that New Zealand was connected by a strip of land to South America (via Antarctica); thus animals could get from one part of the world to another.

Many of these birds have been killed. It is authentically known that as early as the beginning of the 16th century, the Maori caught these large and clumsy birds with the help of trapping pits and chose eggs from the nests.

Burnt and broken bones that were found in the garbage in the territory where the Maori lived, indicate that dinornis was their favorite dish.

Until now, the descendants of the Maori claim that their ancestors were well aware of the moa bird and that they ate its meat. According to legend, on Mount Bakapunaka even now there lives one surviving moa, which is guarded by two huge lizards; she has human features and feeds only on air.

It is a pity that this is only a legend and that man, by hunting and the development of agriculture in ancient times, hastened the disappearance of this so interesting giant bird.

The cause of the extinction of giant moa birds has been found out.

The giant wingless moas apparently died out before the famous Cook reached New Zealand. Some researchers of this mystery believe that the predatory extermination of these birds by the natives is to blame, the other is convinced that the reason for the death of the moa lies in changing climatic conditions on the islands. British scientists put forward another version.

This is what moa birds looked like. The growth of this "instance" is almost three meters (image from darkwing.uoregon.edu)

According to the staff of the London Zoological Institute, everything was to blame ... the genetics of giant birds. More precisely, that part of it that is responsible for the rate of maturation of individuals, writes Innovations Report with reference to a publication in the journal Nature.

After analyzing bone tissue samples taken from the legs of extinct birds, scientists found the presence of up to nine "annual rings" in the places of bone joints. That is, it took the average moa up to ten years to get out of childhood, a few more years to reach puberty. At the same time, living birds belonging to other species are ready for breeding within a year after birth.

The "growth strategy" chosen by the giant moas was trouble-free in the absence of any predators. However, since the appearance of man on the islands (and this happened around the 14th century AD), the rapid decline of their era began. Apparently, the birds simply did not have time to replenish their ranks, melting under the onslaught of Maori hunters.

It took the Maori only about a hundred years to completely exterminate this mysterious species of wingless birds, some of whose representatives reached almost three meters in height and weighed a quarter of a ton.

"Elements"

The largest prehistoric birds

Dromomis stirtoni The flightless Dromomis stirtoni, a giant ostrich-like bird that lived in central Australia between about 15 million and 25,000 years ago, is estimated to have been 3 m and weighed about 500 kg.

moa The giant moa bird (Dinornis maximus), which lived in New Zealand, was probably even larger - 3.7 m, and weighed about 230 kg.

Terathorn The largest of the prehistoric flying birds is the giant teratorn (Argentavis magnificens), which lived on the territory of modern Argentina about 6-8 million years ago. Fossils found in 1979 show that this huge, vulture-like bird had a wingspan of more than 6 m, a height of 7.6 m, and a weight of 80 kg.

Order of extinct ratites. Height up to 3 m St. 20 species. They lived in the forests of Nov. Zealand. The last moas were exterminated by ser. 19 in … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Giant bird from the family. ostrich, now defunct. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov, A.N., 1910. moa is the Australian name for dinornis. New dictionary of foreign words. by EdwART, 2009 … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

MOA- Intersectoral association organization MOA ammonia monooxygenase Source: http://leda.uni smr.ac.ru/RJ/04/04R2R/04R2R2/97point03 04R2R2point.html Dictionary of abbreviations and abbreviations

Exist., Number of synonyms: 1 bird (723) ASIS Synonym Dictionary. V.N. Trishin. 2013 ... Synonym dictionary

Order of extinct ratites. Height up to 3 m. Over 20 species. They lived in the forests of New Zealand. The last moa were exterminated by the middle of the 19th century. * * * MOA MOA (moa-like, Dinornithiformes), a detachment of extinct ratite birds, relatively recently ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

I Moa (Dinornithiformes, or Dinornithes) a detachment of extinct ratites (See ratites). Includes 2 families, uniting over 20 species. Height up to 3 m (Dinornis maximus). The head is small, broad and flat; the beak is large, ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (Dinornis) gigantic extinct birds of New Zealand from the order of runners (see the article Flightless birds and skeleton figures on the table Runners) ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Order of extinct ratites. Vye. up to 3 m St. 20 species. They lived in the forests of New Zealand. The last M. were exterminated by the middle. 19 in … Natural science. encyclopedic Dictionary

moa- moa, indistinctly, husband ... Russian spelling dictionary

moa- unknown A number of deadly keelless birds… Ukrainian glossy dictionary

Books

• Nomoari. The Lost Myth (+CD), Gromov Vadim. In a world where people live in complete harmony with nature, there are no more wars, no confrontations and senseless cruelty, and only one thing overshadows their existence - moa. Cairin and Sier independently...
• Nomoari. Lost Myth (+ CD-ROM), Gromov V. In a world where people live in complete harmony with nature, there are no more wars, no confrontations and senseless cruelty, and only one thing overshadows their existence - moa. Cairin and Sier independently...

Before human intervention, New Zealand was the kingdom of birds. Land mammals, with the exception of a few species of bats, did not exist here. The queen of this feathered state was the giant moa bird ... Its largest specimens reached 2 meters in the shoulder and weighed more than 200 kg. The females were almost twice as heavy as the males.

The giant moa had a natural enemy - the giant eagle, the largest bird of prey on the planet. Antediluvian New Zealand did not trade in trifles.

Here are some facts about the wonderful moa bird:

- the ancestors of the moa flew to New Zealand even before the arrival of the ancestors of the kiwi. Here they settled down, lost the ability to fly, and by the time humans arrived, had evolved into at least ten different species.

“Moa has completely and irrevocably lost her ability to fly. She didn't even have rudimentary wings left. The rudiments of the forelimbs were resorbed even before hatching from the egg - a unique phenomenon among birds.

- Previously, scientists believed that at the time of the arrival of man in New Zealand, there were about 16 species of moa. Over time, this number was reduced to 10, as it turned out that often the skeletal remains identified as two different species turned out to be just a female and male of the same species. It's just that female moas were much more massive than males.

“Not all types of moa were giants. The smallest of them did not exceed 20 kilograms (something like a large turkey).

- The Moa bird is completely exterminated, all ten species. Not even two centuries have passed since the arrival of man on the archipelago, as the meaty tasty “chicken” was eaten to the bone. Giant flightless birds proved too easy prey for primitive hunters and their dogs.

“Moa birds were so numerous that even now it is not difficult to find their bones. In open spaces, skeleton and tissue decay to dust, but in cold caves, in anaerobic swamps and in dry dunes, they may not decompose for millennia. There you can still find them.

Once upon a time, looking for new caves in the karst massifs of the West Coast of the South Island, we stumbled upon a promising failure. To our deep regret, it quickly ended in a dead end. We did not open a new cave, but at the bottom of the cavern we found an almost complete skeleton of a giant moa. Everything except the skull was in place. We took the largest femur with us and handed it over to the Canterbury Museum, where a great many such finds are stored. By the way, sometime in the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries, the Canterbury Museum conducted a lively barter exchange of moa bones. All the major museums in the world wanted to buy a good skeleton of a giant bird, and the local museum had a lot of this stuff. So they exchanged moa bones and skulls for Greek amphoras, Egyptian mummies and antique Chinese snuff boxes. Thanks to moa, our museum has a good collection of antiquities from the Old World.

Unfortunately, the moa bird is not the only New Zealand bird exterminated by man. With the arrival of people in New Zealand, more than three dozen species of birds became extinct: the largest eagle on the planet, a pelican, a swan, a raven, an owl nightjar, a large falcon, two types of flightless geese, a coot, several species of flightless ducks, a flightless partridge, a whole list of any lost the ability to fly song fry and many others.

Once upon a time, giant moa birds up to 3.5 meters high lived in New Zealand. They did not have wings, and therefore they were easily exterminated by the Maori natives. Although these birds are listed as extinct, there are still persistent rumors that they were seen in the 20th century in the secluded corners of the North Island of New Zealand.

Giants slaughtered by man

Even at the end of the 18th century, giant moa birds could be found in New Zealand, today they are listed as extinct species, but enthusiasts still hope to find live specimens of these unique birds in the secluded corners of two huge islands. Once upon a time, even before the arrival of people, New Zealand was a real bird "reserve", there were no mammals here (bats do not count), the kingdom of birds flourished and multiplied, and only a giant eagle posed a serious danger to its largest representatives - moa birds .

According to scientists, once upon a time, the ancestors of the moa flew to New Zealand, they really liked it here, and the complete absence of terrestrial predators caused the gradual loss of the habit of flying. Recently, a group of scientists suggested that moa forgot how to fly after the death of dinosaurs, which posed a serious threat to them. The lizards were gone, and the moa completely lost the need to fly. They don't even have rudimentary wings left.

Moa lost their wings and began to walk, eating leaves, fruits, shoots and roots. Before humans arrived on the islands, moa evolved into about ten different species. In addition to giant moas, there were also small-sized species weighing no more than 20 kg. The largest specimens of moa reached a height of 3.5 meters and weighed about 250 kg. Moreover, females were almost twice as heavy as males.

“Of course, such flightless and non-biting nutritious “chickens”, a kind of mountains of meat on two legs, became easy and tasty prey for immigrants from the islands of Polynesia, who received the name Maori from the white discoverers of the islands. Dogs and rats brought to islands by Polynesian settlers.According to scientists, the period of extermination of moa stretched from the 9th to the 14th century

What the bones tell

Interest in such an exotic bird appeared among European scientists in the second quarter of the 19th century. There were plenty of moa skeletons on the islands, but live specimens did not come across. Trying to find the surviving birds, scientists organized a number of expeditions to the most remote corners of the islands. The enthusiasm of the researchers was fueled by the legend of the Maori, according to which one surviving moa allegedly hides on the top of Mount Bakapunaka. Unfortunately, no one was hiding on the mountain, not a single living bird could be found.

The moa was pioneered by paleontologist Richard Owen, who proved that a giant bone discovered in New Zealand in 1839 belonged to a bird and not to any animal. The scientist devoted 45 years of his life to the study of moa. At his request, naturalist Walter Mantell collected for him from 1847 to 1850 about a thousand bones of giant birds and shell fragments from their eggs. Owen described various types of moa and collected several skeletons of giant birds for museums. In the middle of the 19th century, the largest moa egg was found near Cromwell: its length was 30 cm and its diameter was 20 cm.

Remains of Moa

Moa research continues to this day. For example, relatively recently, scientists found that there were five times more females than males in the populations of mosquitoes. It was a kind of bird matriarchy, the researchers believe that females, larger than males, crowded out the latter with the richest food participants, pursuing an aggressive territorial policy.

In 2009, scientists reported that they were able to reconstruct the coloration of a giant extinct bird. At the disposal of scientists were feathers 2.5 thousand years old, examining their DNA, the researchers found that four species of moa had nondescript brown plumage, only some individuals had white tips of feathers. According to the researchers, the plumage of a soft olive shade of brown served as a good disguise for the moa from the giant Orla Haast. It was he who was the only enemy of the moa and the largest eagle in the world.

So, what did this largest bird in the world look like? Moa are considered close relatives of ostriches, and they were similar to these birds. Two "inflated" legs, carrying a wingless body with a long neck, crowned with a slightly flattened head with a beak bent downwards. The whole body of the bird was covered with feathers. It is curious that moa, like our chickens, swallowed pebbles that ground food in their stomach. Now these polished pebbles are found next to moa bones.

In search of the king bird

Even now, well-preserved moa skeletons and not only bones, but also feathers and even dried pieces of muscles and tendons are found in New Zealand. It is not surprising that after such finds, many people have the idea to look in the secluded corners of the islands and live birds. Eyewitness accounts also encourage such searches. In the 19th century, meetings with giant birds sometimes occurred.

For example, one day, seal hunters in the area near Cook Strait were frightened by the sight of huge birds that ran ashore from the forest. In 1860, the paw prints of a huge bird were seen by officials marking out land. Bird tracks led into the thickets between the rocks, in that area there were many limestone caves, perhaps it was in them that the last moas hid.

In 1959, a small sensation broke out in the scientific world: they allegedly managed to photograph living "extinct" moas from an airplane. The picture was published in the English magazine "London Illustrated News", it could be seen indistinct silhouettes of feathered giants. Later it turned out that it was a newspaper "duck". In any case, the director of the New Zealand Museum in Wellington, Robert Falla, stated: "I declare with all certainty that no one has seen or photographed living moas."

However, already in the new millennium, talk about surviving moa resumed. Australian naturalist Rex Gilroy is sure that living moas live in the remote corners of the North Island of New Zealand, and on the territory of the Urevera National Reserve. True, these are not giant birds, but small bushy moas, but in any case, if they can be found, it will be a scientific sensation.

“Gilroy says: “I am convinced that bush moas are still alive. I have some evidence of the existence of a small bird colony in Urevere. And it is really important to me that it really exists there.” In 2001, during a visit to the reserve, the researcher was able to discover 35 bird prints

Skeptics take Gilroy's claims with irony, stating that all Moa became extinct 500 years ago and now only their skeletal remains can be found.