Scientists from Australia and New Zealand have analyzed more than fifty fossilized feces of the South Island Giant Moa, Upland Moa, Heavy-footed Moa and Little Bush Moa to reconstruct the eating habits of these extinct giant birds.
This is an artist’s impression of the Upland Moa, Megalapteryx didinus, by George Edward Lodge, 1907.
The coprolites of four moa species were excavated from a single rock at Daley’s Flat in the Dart River Valley, the New Zealand’s South Island.
Radio-carbon dating revealed all four species inhabited the area at the same time between 1000 CE and 1400 CE.
Analysis of the plant material in the fossils showed that South Island Giant Moa and Upland Moa ate a diet consisting of plants found both in forested areas and open grasslands, while the Heavy-footed Moa stuck mainly to grassland fare and the Little Bush Moa lived up to is name by primary feeding in forest areas.
“The moa, which became extinct some 400 years ago, played an “irreplaceable” role in the ecosystem of New Zealand,” said Dr Jamie Wood of Landcare Research, New Zealand, and colleagues, who reported the results in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Close up photograph of a moa coprolite, scale bar – 5 mm. Image credit: Wood et al., PNAS.
“It has been suggested that some extant herbivores could act as ecological surrogates for moa. Detailed information on the ecology of extinct species is critical for determining appropriate ecological surrogates,”
“Our study shows that no extant herbivore tax, including other large ratites such as emu and ostrich, could replace the entire range of feeding ecologies exhibited by moa.”
“The extinction of moa resulted in the irreplaceable loss of ecological function in New Zealand’s ecosystems,” the paleontologists concluded.
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Bibliographic information: Jamie R. Wood et al. Resolving lost herbivore community structure using coprolites of four sympatric moa species (Aves: Dinornithiformes). PNAS, published online September 30, 2013; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1307700110
