Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives

Land of the chonky birds: How and why did New Zealand have so many feathered giants?

Nic Rawlence • May 31, 2021

• Adzebill,
• birds,
• evolution,
• Eyles' Harrier,
• gigantism,
• Goose,
• haasts' eagle,
• kakapo,
• moa,
• New Zealand,
• takahē

The eastern moa is stuck fast in the swamp, its thick legs having punched through the peat into the liquid blue clay beneath. Death is inevitable, whether from starvation or from above. Unable to move, the moa can only eat what it can reach around it, if anything. The forests that covered this area during warmer times are … Read More

Lost in translation or deliberate falsification?

Nic Rawlence • Apr 26, 2021

• ancient dna,
• conservation management,
• ecological restoration,
• historical museum specimens,
• translocation

I’m staring at an evolutionary tree of New Zealand wrens when ‘damn it Travers’ rings out. The infamous Victorian collector Henry Hamersley Travers had just struck again. In front of me also are the delicate historical skins of some of these tiny wrens, frozen in time since the day they were collected. While some are still with us like the … Read More

Climate refugee or hardy local? Solving a botanical mystery

Nic Rawlence • Mar 17, 2021

• climate change,
• glaciers,
• ice ages,
• native forests,
• New Zealand,
• southern beech

I’m deep in the middle of the Kā Tiritiri o te Moana Southern Alps with Michael Knapp collecting beech leaves and ripping apart rotting logs on the hunt for giant collembola. Some 17 years later, these precious beech samples would allow Michael and I to answer one of the longest-running debates in New Zealand botany. When Polynesians arrived on … Read More

Skeletons in the closet: my ancestry DNA story

Nic Rawlence • Dec 17, 2019

• ancestry DNA,
• DNA testing,
• family history,
• genetics

‘Are you sitting down?’ the ominous words came down the phone line. Usually, that means something less than happy is about to be imparted. ‘It’s about your grandparents ….’ I grew up in the sunshine capital of Aotearoa New Zealand. My maternal grandparents lived just down the road. My grandfather was always a big part of my life. When not … Read More

Aotearoa: Land of the long or short chronology

Guest Author • Aug 15, 2019

• Aotearoa,
• New Zealand,
• Pacific colonisation,
• Polynesian dispersal,
• Settlement dates

Lachie Scarsbrook “See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me. And no one knows how far it goes”. If you’ve seen Disney’s Moana, like me you probably just sung those first few lines whilst picturing a traditional double-hulled canoe sailing out into the sunny, blue abyss. Discovering new lands: a modern reconstruction of a … Read More

Footprints illuminate the Dark Age of moa evolution

Nic Rawlence • Jul 30, 2019

• evolution,
• Footprints,
• moa,
• New Zealand

A moa walks across a vast flood plain, its feet sinking into the soft mud. Once buried by the next flood, the footprints left behind harden. Millions of years later, a farmhand taking the dogs for a swim on a hot day makes the discovery of a lifetime. Seven footprints, around 25 cm in diameter, were recently discovered in the … Read More

Proposal to mine fossil-rich site in New Zealand sparks campaign to protect it

Nic Rawlence • Jun 17, 2019

• fossil site,
• Foulden Maar,
• mining

An Australian company’s application to mine a fossil-rich site in the south of New Zealand has been met with fierce criticism and a campaign to protect it in perpetuity. Foulden Maar, near Dunedin, is arguably the most important terrestrial fossil site in New Zealand. It comprises a complete ecosystem. This makes it one of the most important … Read More

How to make a flightless bird

Nic Rawlence • May 13, 2019

• flight loss,
• Kiwi,
• moa,
• New Zealand,
• ratites

Visit any major museum in Aotearoa New Zealand and you will see a giant moa skeleton on display. The first thing you notice, apart from its enormous size, is the complete lack of wing bones. The answer to how the tūpuna of moa arrived on our shores and subsequently lost their wings has been one of New Zealand’s greatest evolutionary … Read More

Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode

Nic Rawlence • Apr 21, 2019

• coprolites,
• deer,
• Diet,
• ecological surrogacy,
• moa

In a rockshelter at the base of a giant two-storey house-sized boulder, Jamie and Janet strike pay dirt. A few centimetres under the floor of this dry overhang are the tell tale signs of a prehistoric megafaunal latrine. We’re going on a moa hunt: bones and coprolites can be found under giant boulders like this one. Photo courtesy of … Read More

From the mists of time: the enduring mystery of the adzebills

Nic Rawlence • Mar 07, 2019

• Adzebill,
• ancient dna,
• flufftails,
• isotopes,
• Madagascar,
• New Zealand,
• Saint Bathans,
• wood rails

As a kid, I remember visiting Canterbury Museum with my Dad. I was fascinated and terrified in equal measure by the giant moa skeleton in the entrance, just as my four-year-old is today. But what really interested me was the much smaller, but not less diminutive, skeleton of an extinct adzebill. The adzebills were built like tanks. They … Read More