Rex & Heather Gilroy 2008 New Zealand Moa ResearchAfter 20 years of field researches, during our 2000 expedition on Friday 17th march our efforts were finally rewarded. We had begun a search in the Te Urewera National Park inland from Hawkes’ Bay on the eastern side of North Island. Finding an old disused track we followed this up a forest-covered mountainside. Below us, down a steep forest-covered slope was a gully. The track at this point was about 2m wide with a 1.5m bank above, beyond which lay more dense forest covering a lengthy terrace. It was here that we found the indistinct impressions of large bird footprints, which appeared to emerge from the gully, cross the track and scramble up the bank into the forest beyond. Climbing the bank I soon found further indistinct large, three-toed footprints in the forest floor. |
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Illustration from “The Age of Monsters” by J. Augusta and Z. Burian; Paul Hamlyn London 1966. |
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Moa Skull Rex Giroy |
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No. The oldest known moa specimen is only about 2.4 million years old, while dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago. However, the ancestors of the eleven New Zealand moa species are thought to have lived from as early as 80 million years ago, so it is possible that they may have met a dinosaur! |
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Rex Gilroy holding the male and female footprint casts.
Working from skeletal remains, scientists have estimated
that the female |
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Extinct or Alive? | Hoaxes vrs Real Sightings? |
New Zealand Scrub Moa |
Giant Moa [Dinornis giganteus] |
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As an open-minded field researcher, I prefer to look for the evidence rather than dismiss something out of hand because a textbook says it's extinct." I just say we've got to be prepared to keep an open mind and investigate the evidence. "You've got to be born for this sort of work,". |
"It's difficult for me, because I've got to differentiate between hoax sightings and believable ones. A lot of people are frightened to go to the media," says Rex Gilroy. "They [the media] play it up as a joke but it may affect the life's work of some serious researcher. |
"As far as I'm concerned, they're definitely out there." "I want people to question, to draw their own conclusions". I think you can do no more greater service to man than make him think." "If people think you're a little bit crazy, they leave you alone so you can do your work". |
Dinornis giganteus is argued by New Zealand scientists to have become extinct due to Polynesian depredations around 600 years ago. Its remains occur in both the North and South Islands. |
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