Experts Say It is Unlikely You Will See a Moa Any Time Soon
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Colossal Biosciences has announced plans to de-extinct" the New Zealand moa, one of the world's largest and most iconic extinct birds, but critics say the company's goals remain scientifically impossible.
The moa was the only known completely wingless bird, lacking even the vestigial wings of birds like emus. There were once nine species of moa in New Zealand, ranging from the turkey-sized bush moa (Anomalopteryx didiformis) to the two biggest species, the South Island giant moa (Dinornis robustus) and North Island giant moa (Dinornis novaezealandiae), which both reached heights of 3.6 metres and weights of 230 kilograms.
It is thought that all moa species were hunted to extinction by the mid-15th century, following the arrival of Polynesian people, now known as Mori, to New Zealand sometime around 1300.
Colossal has announced that it will work with the Indigenous Ngi Tahu Research Centre, based at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, along with film-maker Peter Jackson and Canterbury Museum, which holds the largest collection of moa remains in the world. These remains will play a key role in the project, as Colossal aims to extract DNA to sequence and rebuild the genomes for all nine moa species.
As with Colossal's other de-extinction" projects, the work will involve modifying the genomes of animals still living today. Andrew Pask at the University of Melbourne, Australia, who is a scientific adviser to Colossal, says that although the moa's closest living relatives are the tinamou species from Central and South America, they are comparatively small.
This means the project will probably rely on the much larger Australian emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae). What emus have is very large embryos, very large eggs," says Pask. And that's one of the things that you definitely need to de-extinct a moa."
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