Why Did New Zealand's Moas Go Extinct? 180
sciencehabit writes "For millions of years, nine species of large, flightless birds known as moas (Dinornithiformes) thrived in New Zealand. Then, about 600 years ago, they abruptly went extinct. Their die-off coincided with the arrival of the first humans on the islands in the late 13th century, and scientists have long wondered what role hunting by Homo sapiens played in the moas' decline. Did we alone drive the giant birds over the brink, or were they already on their way out thanks to disease and volcanic eruptions? Now, a new genetic study of moa fossils points to humankind as the sole perpetrator of the birds' extinction. The study adds to an ongoing debate about whether past peoples lived and hunted animals in a sustainable manner or were largely to blame for the extermination of numerous species."
Probably because they were big and meaty (Score:5, Funny)
and tasty!
I'm glad they are gone, as the Haast's Eagle would still be here if they were around ... and I'm not keen on walking about while a bird of prey with a 3 meter wingspan looked down on me as a snack!
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and tasty!
I'm glad they are gone, as the Haast's Eagle would still be here if they were around ... and I'm not keen on walking about while a bird of prey with a 3 meter wingspan looked down on me as a snack!
You can only imagine what the Wings people would make of these birds...
Re:Probably because they were big and meaty (Score:5, Interesting)
They've et 'em.
They're gone and there ain't no moa."
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I remember that song, by Paul Walden
The B side was the legend of Hinemoa and Tutanekai
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So when is someone going to clone a Moa so we can have tasty Moa burgers?
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So when is someone going to clone a Moa so we can have tasty Moa burgers?
What's the point? They just taste like chicken.
Re:Probably because they were big and meaty (Score:4, Funny)
But Moa so.
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even better. That means they can process them the same way, but brand them differently.
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You want to scar a moa with a symbol by pressing a piece of red-hot iron into it's flesh.
Go right ahead ; I'll be watching from over there, using this telescope.
Re:Probably because they were big and meaty (Score:5, Interesting)
QED
Why this is surprising news is beyond me. The extinction of the moa has always been portrayed as a human event ever since I was a kid. Glad they found definitive proof but hardly something I needed to know.
What would have been newsworthy would have been the amazing coincidence of humans showing up and NOT having been the cause.
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We knew all along that we were the final cause. The question was whether they had been declining before that.
That was the thesis of this paper [nih.gov], which concluded (based on diversity of mitochondrial DNA) that the species had declined considerably before humans arrived.
That was in 2004; ten years later, a different analysis concludes that the moa were not in fact as numerous as the 2004 paper thought, and the number had in fact been pretty stable. It was only when humans arrived that the number dropped.
Even th
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Where is the interesting news here? It is not about whether this is valid science but whether it is worth reporting as general news.
Why is this on slashdot?
There are 100's of thousands of articles just as nominal as this and we don't reference those.
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There, I sure can't help ya. I found it pretty interesting; it's more relevant to my interests than much of what Slashdot has done of late. But you're absolutely right that there's a whole passel of science of equal interest that gets ignored, while fluff that I find uninteresting (or worse) gets there day after day.
I originally thought that Slashdot had the most insightful scientific and technical commentary on the web. The articles of moderate interest were greatly enhanced by other scientists with a clos
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Also I come from NZ so we grow up learning this stuff so there is that also.
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Yes, I also don't like it when science fails to make me question my beliefs in surprising, original, fun and insightful ways.
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I was commenting on the newsworthiness not the science.
I assume you avidly read the 100's of thousands of articles from around the world that discover that things are as we thought them to be?
Thought not..
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I think it was because of the awesome omelets you could make with their eggs. No eggs hatching no chicks. (TIC)
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But think of the spiky umbrella manufacturers.
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You are probably right. Moa werent too far from Emu/Ostrich. Emu is delicious. Makes great jerky.
Of course, I thought of the outside probability of a viral/bacterial doom being brought by humans.
Doubtless , they ate some before the birds dropped dead though.
Mmmmmm, Emu jerky....
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I would love to live n the world with the Haast's Eagle.
Ran out of bird seed? (Score:2)
Easy to hunt. Nests vulnerable. Virus brought in by the humans (in a classical reverse of bird flu!) Competed for similar resources?
Possibly the eggs or feathers made great hats.
Re:Ran out of bird seed? (Score:4, Funny)
I hate people. Why do we have to ruin everything? This is why we can't have nice things.
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This is why our children are not being eaten by giant eagles.
Re:Ran out of bird seed? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe if there were more giant eagles there would be fewer fat slow kids.
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whaddayatalkinbout?
they had nice things, nice tasty eggs.
without people nobody would have nice things.
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Easy to hunt. Nests vulnerable. Virus brought in by the humans (in a classical reverse of bird flu!) Competed for similar resources?
Possibly the eggs or feathers made great hats.
My guess is that it's the same thing that happened to the dodo: rats and pigs (brought by humans) pillaging the nests.
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Also, human hunting local predators (for food, for resources or for safety) might have detabilised exiting prey-predator balances, ultimately eliminating ecological niches for the moas. This is called the second order predation hypothesis [amazon.com] and it seems to fit quite well for the megafauna extinction of prehistoric times, which may have some similar caracteristics to the moa extinction.
Did past people hunt in a sustainable manner? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Betteridge's law of headlines: No
Nor did our ancestors farm sustainably.
One would think that by now we ought to have learnt our lessons and that we'd now be more careful. Alas, apparently we seem to be a very slow learning mob.
Re:Did past people hunt in a sustainable manner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? The reason that "native americans" lived "in harmony" with nature is because they had no horses. They were hunter-gatherers, and would move into an area and kill and eat every single thing that they could reach by walking a few days. Then, when the game was gone, they picked up stakes and moved to their next place.
Now, lest one think I'm attacking an ethnic group, let me point out that non-humans do the same thing. A species will move into an area, and eat everything they can catch or reach. It has - for eons - been a war between those that eat, and those that get eaten, and I'll include plants in this war, also.
A few seasons of excellent rains and growth in a deciduous forest holding ungulates will result in extensive damage to underbrush, to the point where the next generation of animals is put under population control by that oldest of birth control methods: starvation. One of the reasons that the US states have licensed hunting seasons is to manage such populations of not-humans that can and do destroy their environment. In point of fact, humans are the very first animal who have the option to make a choice to not damage their environment.
So for those who feel all puffy and bad about evil humans, you've missed the boat. You are sporting a ludicrous level of ignorance. Animals survive in the presence of humans only to the extent that they evolve to become stealthy enough, dangerous enough, or manage to breed even more wantonly than the humans who hunt them. The most common form of death, from time immemorial, is assassination with intent to ingest.
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Some did that, others built cities and farmed.
Not that either was in some kind of mythical 'balance' but the native peoples where a very wide variety of culture types.
Don't understand cuteness as an evolutionary survival trait. I mean if cats weren't seen as cute, no one would have them becasue they are assholes.
Also, usefulness. Oh, and tasty is turning into a survival strategy because people will breed them for eating.
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I think you are underestimating the intelligence of the people back then.
However, it is one thing to notice that a species is going extinct. It is another thing to actually save it. Particularly if it means me going hungry now in the hope of more food in a year or two, food that likely goes to someone else.
A new Study? (Score:1)
Really a new study? The Thousands of Moa bones removed from Maori middens wasn't a clue? Or the stories passed down about the Maori hunting the Moa also isn't a clue? No need a genetic study to prove it, Maybe these researches could do a genetic study on JFK and tell us who shot him?
Re:A new Study? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really a new study? The Thousands of Moa bones removed from Maori middens wasn't a clue?
RTFA. There was a credible theory that the Moa had evolved itself into a corner and was going to go extinct anyway. There's a similar theory about the giraffe now. If someone ate all the giraffes, people would say that it was that that killed them off, and in a literal fashion they'd be right, but the giraffe isn't going to last long anyway even without human assistance. It's way too specialised. For one thing, if anything threatens the acacia tree population, like a virus or a change in climate, they're screwed. And that's not the only problem they have. People say "oh, nature is balanced, humans are out of balance". Nature is not balanced. It gets messed up all on its own all the time. It's just that we mostly see the stuff that has survived, that currently is in a state of balance, and we assume that nature is this magical cohesive force that stays in tune with itself. Nonsense. We are part of nature, and we're just one example of how nature sometimes gets out of balance and creates a big mess for itself.
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"Moa had evolved itself into a corner and was going to go extinct anyway"
wow, that a pretty ignorant statement.
I said, there was a credible theory that said that. Turns out it was probably wrong. However, it happens all the time. Pretty much every species that has ever gone extinct has done so because it couldn't adapt to changing circumstances. Some new predator arrives that you can't defend against, some big prey you rely on is out-competed by something that you can't hunt, some volcano goes off and kills off the vegetation that you eat. The longer your lifespan, and the more specialised you are in what you do, th
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700 year old Maori?
I think we need genetic studies done to find out about their longevity.
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They claim what? Land mostly.
Rats (Score:2)
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The Maori watercraft weren't large enough for rats to hitch rides unnoticed. That took European and Chinese ships with large, dark holds, bilges, and closed storage spaces.
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Like AC said, they brought rats here on purpose.
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PETA Anyone? (Score:3)
Dodo, Moa, SSDD.
"Like many animals that evolved in isolation from significant predators, the Dodo was entirely fearless of humans. This fearlessness and its inability to fly made the Dodo easy prey for sailors"
Uh what? (Score:3, Insightful)
The study adds to an ongoing debate about whether past peoples lived and hunted animals in a sustainable manner or were largely to blame for the extermination of numerous species.
The tragedy of the commons ain't new. We call it human nature. Some indigenous peoples had it right, for example native Americans on the west coast and around that area; they had fairly strict rules on land management and engaged in regular controlled burns. On the other hand, just go to the middle of the nation and you've got natives burning down forests to make more plains land for more buffalo. Not exactly a carbon sequestration strategy. I've heard before that Europe would have been completely deforested if the black plague didn't put a crimp in various ambitions. Hooray for disease, I guess.
Re:Uh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect that when animals are hunted like moa, rather than gathered like shellfish, then it was more difficult for the tohunga to spot that there was a supply problem that needed to be addressed before it became too late.
Re:Uh what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always thought that what happened in NZ sort of just proves human nature (not pakeha or Maori, just humans) - the Maori showed up with well developed cultural systems for managing fisheries, having island hopped through the Pacific for maybe 1000 years before they came to NZ - what they didn't have was rules, or experience managing moa, or forestry and as a result burned a lot of it down to get at those tasty moa - basically the same thing the Europeans would do when showing up somewhere new - exploit it like crazy - I'm sure if the moa had lasted longer, maybe if NZ was a bit bigger, people would have figured out how to manage moa - numbers would get low, a tapu would be proclaimed, after a while it would be lifted and the moa population would have stablised ..... by the time people figured it out it was probably too late
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That's an interesting narrative you have there. The settlements were/are about the Treaty and nothing else. The cultural stuff is important, and it's possible for a culture to appreciate the importance of the environment around them, and also over succeeding generations, make a total mess of it.
It doesn't sound like you've read 'The Penguin History of New Zealand'. It should be required reading in schools. You should do yourself a favour and find a copy, if only the read the first two/three chapters.
Re:Uh what? (Score:5, Funny)
"because your better than us"
Well, he DOES write better than you do ...
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The whites stole the Maori land that the Maoris stole from some birds? Kind of sounds like maybe the Maoris should stop being sore losers and get on with joining the modern world.
Re:Uh what? (Score:5, Funny)
But in many cases land was brought.
What!? The settlers brought land with them from Britain? How small was NZ originally then?
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Notions of land ownership (and ownership generally) were nothing like European ones, and that was a major complicating factor. Many didn't really know what they were doing - it was a new concept that wasn't well understood. That said, many purchases were made from distant relatives (like the second-nephew-twice-removed) of "the owners" (the chiefs?), not "the owners" themselves. It's like Bill Gates' wife's sister's kid selling a few hundred million Microsoft shares and pocketing the cash. How legit does th
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If you steal something should your brother pay for it? How about someone you don't know but has the same colour skin? Or someone whos ansestors came from the same country as you did?
As for your last line "Morally and legally, Aotearoa belongs to the Maori. My culture is not Maori, it's European. So I left and came home to Europe." I call bullshit, as a 2nd gen Kiwi I am a native of New Zealand as were my paren
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How is it right that the current generation has to pay for the crimes of a past generation?
How is it right that the current generation benefits from the good work of a past generation?
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Somewhat true to my current understanding. But, it seems to me that the current situation was brought about by not following the Treaty of Waitangi. For instance which version (language) was signed first? If the Maori version was signed second then we should take the Maori understanding of words, if the English version was signed second then we take the English version of the text (eg; later supersedes former). If only the Maori version was signed then why are the English (who obviously didn't speak Maori
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Probably bs just like the native americans here in the states claiming to be all sustainable and crap. they did their best to conquer but lacked the technology so they failed.
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So you're suggesting modern cultures wait until all the abundant resources run out before making any changes?
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"they would probably kill all the birds and raise yams or something that had a better ROI. "
Reminds me of the 'Highland Clearances' of Scotland. Landowners realised that they had farmer tenants living on land which would have a better ROI were it instead used used to raise sheep. Forceful evictions followed, leaving many families suddenly kicked out of their homes with almost no notice.
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Anyone who believes that any fishery can be even vaguely "sustainable in perpetuity" knows nothing of fish, fishermen, or aquatic ecosystems.
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In many cases you can effect a complete turn-around, from being on the brink of species collapse to a fishery that appears to be sustainable in perpetuity. The property right together with a catch limit creates something more than the sum of its parts.
I would love to hear an example of that happening.
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The real question is, how cognizant of their equilibrium were they?
You need to remember that they lived in this region for at least ten thousand years. They were well cognizant of the issues regarding overfishing, overharvesting of shellfish, or failing to set fires yearly in the land of poison oak. If they weren't, they would have eliminated their natural resources long previously. There was enough food for them to grow their population much larger, but that wasn't one of their primary values.
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Orly?
I'm having trouble finding the paper. I want to see if I can figure out which birds were being driven out of existence, that is was it based on tastiness or nuisance value? Because I would kill any number of seagulls, you can't possibly step on more than a million.
Just a thought (Score:5, Funny)
I know when other people are around, I cannot use the bathroom. Just too caught up in knowing there are other people around. What if the birds had the same problem and since the people never went away, they just died.
debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
The study adds to an ongoing debate about whether past peoples lived and hunted animals in a sustainable manner or were largely to blame for the extermination of numerous species
There's actually a debate?
The noble savage is a character of the imagination.
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Not really. We had Macho Man Randy Savage. He was both noble and a Savage. When Q'uq'umatz was going to destroy the world, at the end of the Mayan Calendar, Macho gave his life to wrestle the world away from the grip of the great creator snake. What can be nobler than that?
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The noble savage is a character of the imagination.
North/Central/South American tribes were slash and burning their way through the forests long before the European world showed up on their doorstep.
The theory is that Europeans actually promoted forest growth as they drove out the native Americans and broke the cycle of man made forest fires.
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The theory is that Europeans actually promoted forest growth as they drove out the native Americans and broke the cycle of man made forest fires.
Actually it was disease. The population of the Americas dropped by 80% or more due to diseases introduced by contact with the Europeans. That's why the Europeans were able to conquer the Americas relatively easily. Had there been 5x or 10x as many Indians the story might have been different.
The native cultures of the Americas was extremely diverse, so it's hard to make generalizations about the ecological sustainability of their societies. There's clear examples of human driven ecological collapse in the
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" The population of the Americas dropped by 80% or more due to diseases introduced by contact with the Europeans"
actually we do not know if it was caused with European contact.
The largest population drop happened between observational visits, and in areas far removed for where the few Europeans had appeared.
When the Europeans did arrive, they found empty cities and farm land. Could it have been European disease? yes, but we really don't know about that period. It could just as easily been a mutation of a di
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better than animals in my book. unless you are an animal then please do that only with other animals.
Do WOLVES hunt in a sustainable manner? (Score:3)
But humans? Nay! Once you become self-aware you have to be sustainable, stewards of the Earth, resurrect the mammoth, replant forests, self-flaggelate for our unending sins, yadda yadda.
Here's a hint for you - humans are animals. Eat-Fuck-Kill. That has been our mantra ever since we first banged two rocks together. Now it is Eat (Vegetarian) Fuck (only our spouses, with condoms) Kill (never, unless the government says it is OK). $It's all our fault, for any value of $It.
I wish I was a wolf.
Re:Do WOLVES hunt in a sustainable manner? (Score:5, Insightful)
What has not escaped my attention is our obligation to care for and about our environment now that we are self-aware.
Perhaps we are the one species destined to rise above our savage origins to successfully micromanage the very environment that spawned us. If we're not, in another 200,000 years or so, the next big-brained alpha will have a run at it.
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I'd rather have a bottle of good whiskey in front of me,
than a frontal lobotomy.
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Thing is, is that we (humans) have broken our Darwinian evolution template ... we (humans) can take and plunder and consume not just other animals, but all sorts of resources that also affect other animals in a negative fashion - straight up extinction, denial of use of breeding/nesting areas, wiping out food sources, etc. For a while, we (humans) can "get around that" by becoming better at taking the resources to consume, but eventually they will all be consumed.
On top of that, our opposable thumbs along
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Too late for what? The earth / Mother Nature doesn't give a damn. Humans went extinct? Shit...25 other species of critter snuffed today, and maybe another few evolved into being. 4 billion years of stewardship vs our several hu
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either we need to voluntarily reduce our population to about 1% of what it is today (but please make plans for the bodies first!) or we need to be stewards
Or else? What happens if we don't do either? You failed to specify that.
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Once you become self-aware you have to be sustainable, stewards of the Earth
Screw the Earth. Once you become self-aware, you have to not cause lots of your fellow self-aware beings to die. That is what sustainability is really about, beneath the sugar-sweet crust.
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Here's a great link about how humans have developed their inner wolf. Cheer up champ!
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R2XKMDXZHQ26YX/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R2XKMDXZHQ26YX"</a>
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Yup. You just feed it grains, and it'll fatten up and eventually die of some cardiovascular disease. Much like humans, incidentally.
You're conveniently forgetting that humans are the only creatures on this planet who can, and often do, anticipate the feedback loops you're mentionning and take meaures to prevent the "bad endings".
We're not a "deadly disease", we're just more capable than other animals, and that high capability and efficiency applies to the good as well as the
That picture is wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
The Maori didn't use bows and arrows.
I thought this was, you know, settled science (Score:5, Interesting)
New Zealand is so isolated that other than three species of small bat, no mammals whatever evolved in NZ until the day the Maori landed. So we have a Colorado-sized pair of islands inhabited by an assortment of species too ridiculous even for Australia, and with no adaptation to the presence of animals. There's the giant earthworm that glows in the dark: ...the three-eyed lizard... ...the living bug zapper... ...and the 12-foot tall ground-dwelling bird - no animals to run from, remember, that was unfortunately delicious:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/n... [nzherald.co.nz]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.waitomo.com/waitomo... [waitomo.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
The Maori had no weapons more advanced than clubs, but that was all they needed. Think of it as the world's first, biggest, most environmentally-insensitive tailgate party, after which the species was no moa.
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<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10793961">http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/n...</a>
</p></quote>
However, it later evolved into the one-eyed lizard, which became ubiquitous, much to the dismay of the female homo sapiens.
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after which the species was no moa.
*Badum tish*
Well... duh? (Score:2)
You introduce a carnivore to an isolated environment where a species or group of species' survived that went extinct everywhere else because of carnivores they could not outrun, outsmart or outbreed, and just survived because no such carnivores existed where they survived.
Take a wild guess what's going to happen.
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"Take a wild guess what's going to happen."
I'm going to go with McMoas?
I'm fed up with romanticized natives (Score:2)
"ongoing debate" (Score:2)
Yes, in exactly the same way that the existence of fossils adds to an ongoing debate about whether the Earth was created 6000 years ago.
WHAT THE FUCK
What ongoing debate? (Score:2)
It is well known the humans never hunted in a sustainable way.
The only one claiming a debate are people that fall for the naturalistic fallacy.
Resurrection? (Score:2)
According to TFA, the work was based on extensive analysis of Moa genetic material obtained from bones. The evidence was that the Moa was in fact thriving (becoming more genetically diverse) until humans came along and ate everything Moa-related. Eggs, adults, you name it. This makes me wonder if the Moa might be a better candidate for cloning and reintroduction than something like a Mammoth. Use an Ostrich as the donor and then let them loose on the South Island. NZ is pretty eco-aware these days so it see
Extinct? (Score:2)
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A) There are different types of earthquake
B) There are different kinds of ground.
C) Earthquakes happen for different lengths of time
D) I am assuming he is not serious, but you post show a pretty ignorant view of earthquakes
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Fuck off. You're basically saying there was a non event in California... get ready for the end of the world! You are right that the Richter scale is logarithmic, but even a seismic event 100x stronger would not be much concern.
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maybe redirect ALL those prayers to Chile, with their 6.7 earthquake, which is more than 100's more severe than California's, and with probably 100 times less ability to deal with the effects.
when the big one hits, and the ocean waters come flooding in to make all-new beachfront property, you all will be electrocuted by your electric vehicles.
good riddance.
The one in Chile a couple years ago was 8.8, so 80 times the strength of the 7.0 one that devastated Haiti. My wife has been through a 7.9 in Peru, about twice as strong as the 1906 San Francisco quake. People in Peru and Chile don't even get out of bed for a 4.4 quake.
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Oddly enough, I was in bed when that 4.4 hit and I didn't bother getting up either.