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MOA (MOH-uh)
Extinct
giant flightless birds of New Zealand
Common
clues: Bygone bird; Kiwi's late kin; Extinct New Zealander;
Extinct flightless bird
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
once a year
News:
Moa
bones add backbone to past
Video:
Nissin
Cup-O-Noodle Moa Ostrich
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.
Elephantine
Moa (Dinornis elephantopus) in the Gallery of Fossils, British
Museum
Moa
became extinct around the year 1500. This is thought to be due to
hunting and land clearance after humans arrived in the islands
although another school of thought suggests that numbers were
declining before the impact of humans. Before the arrival of
humans, some moa were hunted by Harpagornis, the world's largest
eagle which is also now extinct. The kiwi are regarded as
moderately close relatives of the Moa.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Moa".
MOA
(97) 31
Tu >1 07 Extinct bird
9
We >1 99 Bygone bird
6
Th- >1 08 Extinct flightless bird
6
We >1 08 Extinct kiwi relative
4
We >1 04 Extinct bird of New Zealand
3
Th >1 93 Kiwi's extinct kin
2
Tu- >1 07 Extinct New Zealand bird
2
Th- >1 99 Extinct New Zealander
2
Th- >1 97 Kiwi's extinct cousin
2
Th- >1 98 Kiwi's late kin
1
Sa NYT 94 12-foot bird
1
Th WSJ 09 Bird hunted to extinction by the Maori
1
Th NYT 09 Bird once hunted by the Maori
1
Th NYT 02 Bygone relative of the kiwi
1
Sa NYT 82 Crossword bird ANI EMU ERN
1
Sa NYT 90 Dodo associate
1
Th NYT 87 Dodo colleague
1
Th NYT 87 Dodo's cousin
1
Th LAT 07 Emu's extinct relative
1
Sa NYT 94 Extinct apteryx
1
Th NYT 57 Extinct bird.
1
Sa NYT 95 Extinct cousin of the kiwi
1
We CSy 04 Extinct kiwi cousin
1
Th NYT 06 Extinct kiwi kin
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