Guest Author • Mar 20, 2019 •
Dr Michael Knapp Fourteen years ago, I was a PhD student somewhere half-way through my degree and had just published my first paper. As I proudly flicked through the hard copy of the journal, I noticed another article that caught my interest. Using DNA extracted from ancient bones, an international team lead by researchers from Oxford University and … Read More
Nic Rawlence • Feb 08, 2019 •
It’s the depths of winter and I’m squatting in the snow, surrounded by southern beech forest, using a pair of tweezers to pick up fresh steaming deer poo. Pooper scooper: Braving the cold in the name of science, these deer droppings are a harbinger of a changing world. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood. My wife Maria, and palaeoecologist … Read More
Guest Author • Sep 07, 2018 •
Priscilla Wehi, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research; Hēmi Whaanga, University of Waikato, and Murray Cox, Massey University Museums throughout Aotearoa New Zealand feature displays of enormous articulated skeletons and giant eggs. The eggs are bigger than two hands put together. This is all that remains of the moa. Tracing extinctions that happened centuries ago … Read More
Alison Campbell • Jun 03, 2018 •
I’m starting to gear up for some Schol Bio preparation days in the regions (hi, Hawkes Bay! See you in 4 weeks!) and realised that I haven’t written anything specifically focused on those exams for a while. So I thought that putting something together would be a good way to spend a rather wet Sunday. At these days we usually … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 26, 2018 •
Jo Carpenter This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. When the giant moa of New Zealand were hunted to extinction about five centuries ago, the disappearance of the birds themselves was one of several losses. There were nine species of moa that ranged in size from 15 to 250 kilograms. Moa … Read More
Nic Rawlence • Mar 19, 2018 •
It’s the height of the Central Otago summer – barren, dry and dusty. Driving down the gravel road to St Bathans, we’re travelling back in time, down the rabbit hole to a world long gone. Only ghosts remain of this lost world and that’s what we’ve come here to find. The fossilised bones of a myriad of animals dating back … Read More
Helen Taylor • May 09, 2017 •
Most research on de-extinction focuses on the technology behind making it happen. It’s refreshing to see a group of conservation scientists examining what happens when you release these species into the wild. What comes after de-extinction? The latest issue of the journal Functional Ecology has a special feature on de-extinction. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you won’t have … Read More
Guest Author • May 09, 2017 •
If we are going to resurrect an extinct species, where will it live and what will it eat? Sciblogs is running a series of posts on de-extinction to coincide with a special issue of the journal Functional Ecology focusing on the topic. In this guest post, special issue author Dr Jamie Wood from Landcare Research looks to the past to find answers … Read More
Jamie Steer • Apr 13, 2017 •
Dr Jamie Steer ponders whether the ‘deer are like moa’ debate has passed its use-by date. This is the second and concluding part of the series – read part one here. Critics stuck in the past I reckon that critics of the ‘deer are like moa’ position often misinterpret it. Deer advocates have never claimed that deer are the … Read More
Jamie Steer • Apr 12, 2017 •
In this two-part series, Dr Jamie Steer ponders whether the ‘deer are like moa’ debate has passed its use-by date. Writing on the impacts of introduced deer in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute in 1892, the Reverend P. Walsh argued that New Zealand’s native forests were poorly equipped to deal with grazing mammals. Taking the pre-human forest as … Read More