r/interestingasfuck • u/RedaNassef • 13h ago
A 3,300-year-old mummified foot of an upland moa bird discovered in a New Zealand cave in 1987, showing intact skin, claws, and feathers running all the way down to its ankles, preserved by dry cave breezes
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u/raizen157 12h ago
Honestly I'm down for Jurassic Park situation bring back extinct creatures lol
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u/Owobowos-Mowbius 12h ago
Fun fact in the book they arent really bringing back extinct creatures, theyre just making really fucked up mutants that resemble what we expect dinosaurs to look like.
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u/Routine_Phase_8980 13h ago
Now I can see why birds are descendants of Dinosaurs, thought this was a T-Rex limb at first before fully reading through the title
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u/zobby3 12h ago
Is there enough intact dna to make a new one? I think the world is ready for this sort of thing now.
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u/SaintUlvemann 10h ago
There probably is. They've done various studies of short DNA sequences to investigate particular archeological sites. There are many bones left and they are young so the DNA is usually in good condition.
In fact, they've already sequenced the whole genome of the little bush moa, a relative of the giant one, smaller than an ostrich. They also have the full mitochondrial genome of the giant moa.
The giant moa is one of the species on the list that a company called Colossal Biosciences is claiming that they're going to bring back, they say they've been working with bone samples from museums.
Now, that is the same company that "made a dire wolf"; specifically, they edited 14 genes in a gray wolf and called it a dire wolf. There are by their own estimates more like 14 million genetic differences between gray wolves and dire wolves.
But also, to their credit and not to be too negative, they are also doing very good genetic engineering, their tech is cool. The dire wolf thing is realistically probably just designer pets for rich people, but hype for the tech bros is not so bad really. They've used money from projects to e.g. clone a bunch of endangered red wolves, just like they said, and that is actually good.
Overall, I'd say "there's reasonable odds our species may resurrect the giant moa within the next few decades."
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u/Ok-Medium2866 11h ago
I can think of a certain franchise that warned us against this sort of thing.
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u/_-Generic-_-Name-_ 12h ago
No the fuck we are not!
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u/HyperbolicSoup 12h ago
Imagine the omelette and the rides to school though
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u/Mayonnaise_Poptart 11h ago
This is what the first humans who arrived in NZ imagined (well, maybe not rides to school), unfortunately for the moa.
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u/Mayonnaise_Poptart 11h ago
We have big flightless birds. Ostriches are more than halfway there already. Just selectively breed bigger ostriches.
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u/ghoulcreep 11h ago
We don't have time for that shit. We need bigger birds now.
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u/mechmind 12h ago
It's a bad video because it doesn't show any scale. Where's the banana?
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u/NoLobster7957 12h ago
The largest moa were like 12 feet tall so this is probably a pretty big ol feets
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u/Individual-Iron-6370 7h ago
"The bird is gone. The foot is still here."
Quote from Capt. Obvious' book 'No Shit Sherlock,' Penguin, 1947
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u/Harry_Iconic_Jr 9h ago
If I found that claw in a cave, the first thing I would do is GTFO of the cave
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u/bitchSpray 9h ago
I wish they had bananas in NZ. I feel like this doesn't have the effect it could have on me.
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u/GalarianGengar 12h ago
This is old. The moa was damn near a big ostrich. It looks crazier than it is. If you look at the foot of an ostrich, it looks like a dinosaur.
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u/DeepFinish2895 12h ago
Yeah says 3300 years old! And found in 1987! What's your point
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u/GalarianGengar 12h ago
The moa bird went extinct roughly around 600 years ago. It lived with humans. How wrong are you?
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u/DeepFinish2895 12h ago
Idk just reading the words on the post
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u/GalarianGengar 12h ago
Yea and this is how so many of you become "educated" because you don't know how to do your own 10 second research. You see something on Reddit and believe it.
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u/MisplacedFurniture 7h ago
Why are you being so hostile? Nothing they said disagreed with you.
Yes, this particular foot is estimated to be 3300 years old, yes, it was discovered (already preserved) in 1987 and yes, moa went extinct roughly 600 years ago after being hunted by humans. None of this is contradictory.
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u/LeLefraud 11h ago
They were wiped out extremely quickly once humans got there, a giant ass dino bird might seem scary but we wiped out their whole population with primitive tech
When we got there they had a population of up to 2 million, less than a hundred years later there were zero left
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u/ThePowerOfStories 5h ago
When it comes to being hunted by humans, being bigger just makes it an easier target. Rats and roaches are doing way better than mammoths and moa.
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u/AnyMeanzPossible 4h ago
It’s crazy that only 3000 years ago we had birds twice the size of humans… we literally killed most predators bigger than us
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u/Dramatic-Avocado4687 12h ago
What happened to the rest of the beast?
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u/Dora_Xplorer 12h ago
Eaten by some predator 500 years ago maybe? Maybe the foot wasn't delicious or was saved for later and the predator never got to it.
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u/rangda 7h ago
No predators for them in NZ that would be found in the back of a deep cave that long ago. NZ has no native mammals except a couple of tiny bats. Before Polynesian settlers introduced rats and dogs (a couple of thousand years after this moa died) the only things that would eat something like this were gargantuan eagles or little scavenging birds, reptiles and bugs.
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u/ablonde_moment 12h ago
The bird is gone. The foot is still here. I hope this helps.
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u/Ecstatic_Score6973 12h ago
yeah idk what that commenter was confused about
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u/Dramatic-Avocado4687 12h ago
“I wonder what happened to the rest of the bird?”
Do you people have any sense of curiosity?
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u/gonzogonzobongo 12h ago
That’s not how you phrased your original question. You phrased it like someone here would know what happened to the rest of it, even thought it’s likely that it’s impossible to know
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u/Dramatic-Avocado4687 11h ago
Someone actually engaged their frontal lobe to answer with a potential scenario. Is it really my fault that people can’t think a little bit further than the phrasing?
Nope, Reddit is full of pompous jackasses who are more willing to make snark comments than actually engage in a discussion.
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u/Ecstatic_Score6973 11h ago
Are you asking how it died or why the entire bird isnt fossilized?
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u/Dramatic-Avocado4687 11h ago
Well, both really. Was it hunted thousands of years ago and only the foot left behind and the rest eaten? Or died intact and only the foot fossilised. If so, why is that?
The video doesn’t really provide any conclusive evidence as to what happened to the rest of the bird. Which is fine, but was hoping to have some kind of discussion about it.
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u/pokeyporcupine 11h ago
I have such ongoing resentment to the ancient Maori for the extinction of the moas
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u/Israel_Azkanbe 12h ago edited 10h ago
For reference:
The bird to the left is the Moa bird, the bird in the middle is an elephant bird and the bird to the right is not actually a bird but instead a man
Edit: I have learned that the bird on the right is actually a hybrid of a bird and a man. Please see Rick and Morty Season 1 Episode 11 “Ricksy Business” for more information