The Lost World of the Moa by Trevor Worthy and Richard Holdaway, Indiana, $89.95, ISBN 0253340349
At about 160 kilograms, the extinct giant moa of New Zealand, Dinornis giganteus, was an avian heavyweight, one of the most massive birds ever. Only the elephant bird of Madagascar has eclipsed it in size. The Lost World of the Moa is also a serious heavyweight, a book full of technical data, but don鈥檛 be put off.
Trevor Worthy and Richard Holdaway give us a glimpse of what life might have been like if our mammalian ancestors, those tiny creatures rather like Robert Burns鈥檚 鈥渨ee, sleekit, cowrin, tim鈥檙ous beastie鈥�, had not gained a foothold.
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Some 82 million years ago, New Zealand broke away from Australia. Marie Celeste-like, the islands drifted into the Pacific with a curious crew of giant earthworms, carnivorous snails, flightless crickets, a bunch of ancient plants inherited from dinosaur times and lots of birds. Altogether, some 245 bird species, mostly unique, occupied the islands, including many flightless species including the giant moa.
In 1844 British anatomist Richard Owen, of dinosaur fame, estimated that the giant moa (Dinornis giganteus) stood about 3 metres high. Now thought to measure a more modest 2 metres, it could have stretched to reach a particularly attractive leaf.
The bird鈥檚 only large predator until humans arrived was the Haast鈥檚 eagle. Up to 12 kilograms in weight, with a wingspan of 2.4 metres, this raptor could even handle the odd moa, whose fossil pelvis bones have been found cleanly punctured by the eagle鈥檚 claws.
Although it鈥檚 an academic tome, The Lost World of the Moa is a book full of fascinating details about a vanished scene. It brings home that we are responsible forthe 76 species, or more than 30 per cent of New Zealand鈥檚 birds, lost at the hand of humans over the past 1000 years.