Moas in decline before humans arrived
Humans may not be entirely to blame for wiping out moas—the giant flightless birds that once grazed in New Zealand. A new study by researchers in the US and New Zealand suggests that a huge moa population existed in the few thousand years before the arrival of humans. Skeletal remains and other clues had previously put the moa population in New Zealand at around 159,000 at the time humans arrived, one thousand years ago. But the latest research suggests that there were between 3 and 12 million moa. If both numbers are correct, that means something else decimated the bird population before humans finished it off some 500 years ago.