Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Feces Update

Ancient bird dung gives clues to pre-human New Zealand - Yahoo! News: "HONG KONG (Reuters) – Researchers have managed to get a peek into pre-human New Zealand after finding feces of giant extinct birds buried in caves and rock shelters in remote areas across southern New Zealand.

The scientists traced most of the 1,500 pieces of dung to the flightless and now extinct moa bird, which weighed as much as 250 kilograms and measured up to three meters in height.

Some of the feces recovered was up to 15 centimeters in length and dated from about 4,000 to a few hundred years ago, Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters."

1 comment:

L. Clarke said...

There aint no moa on Aotearoa.