• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Could The Long-Extinct Bush Moa Be Brought Back From The Dead?

June 11, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Given that they’re, y’know, dead, it’s hard to discern much about the life of extinct creatures like the little bush moa, a turkey-sized emu lookalike that strutted around New Zealand until the 13th century. But using the 21st century power to study ancient DNA, a new study has provided more clues about how the bush moa lived than we might get from fossils alone.

Advertisement

“With extinct species, we have very little information except what their bones looked like and in some cases what they ate,” said Scott V. Edwards, senior study author and a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, in a statement. “DNA provides a really exciting window into the natural history of extinct species like the little bush moa.”

Advertisement

And so, Edwards and a team of fellow researchers set to producing a genome sequence – the entirety of an organism’s DNA – for the bush moa.

They did this using a method similar to that used to produce genome sequences for other extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth. DNA was extracted from a single bush moa toe bone and sequenced in short snippets.

The next step was to piece the snippets together into their correct positions. This was made slightly simpler by using the emu genome as a guide; not only is the emu related to the bush moa, but it also has a particularly well-characterized genome.

It should be noted that the resulting genetic map is a draft, meaning that there may well be inaccuracies, or bits missing that the researchers don’t know about. Nonetheless, it’s pointed to some interesting features of what the bush moa’s sensory experience may have been like.

Advertisement

Genetic evidence suggests that, like many birds, they had four types of cone photoreceptors – proteins in the retina that are light-sensitive and convert it into an electrical signal. The particular receptors present mean that, despite having fairly small eyes, they could see both color and ultraviolet.

And if you’ve ever wondered whether extinct birds might enjoy kimchi, the answer could be yes; the genome sequence suggests that bush moa had the full set of taste receptors, meaning they’d be able to pick up on umami.

It’s hoped that continuing to study the genome might also explain how flightless birds evolved; the bones found in birds with wings are completely absent in moa.

Bush moa, alongside the other eight species of moa, are thought to have gone extinct around 800 years ago, following the arrival of Polynesian human settlers in New Zealand – though some people have claimed that the giant moa was still kicking about in the early 1990s.

Advertisement

With a genome sequence in hand, could the bush moa be brought back from the grave? People are certainly trying with other extinct birds.

But that’s not the purpose of the current research, as Edwards explained. “To me, this work is all about fleshing out the natural history of this amazing species,” the researcher concluded.

The study is published in Science Advances.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Glovo bags two grocery picking and delivery startups
  2. Tesla speeds the EV industry’s South by Southwest drive
  3. The Truth Behind The “Aztec” Crystals Skulls Continues To Fascinate
  4. 500,000 People May Have Once Lived On Australia’s Long-Lost Landmass

Source Link: Could The Long-Extinct Bush Moa Be Brought Back From The Dead?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Why Do Orcas Have White Spots Near Their Eyes?
  • Tomb Of First King Of Ancient Maya City Discovered In Belize
  • The Real Reason The Tip Of Your Tape Measure Wiggles Like That
  • The “Haunting” Last Message From NASA’s Opportunity Rover, Sent From Inside A Planet-Wide Storm
  • Adorable Video Proves Not All Gorillas Hate The Rain. It Might Even Win One A Mate
  • 5,000-Year-Old Rock Art May Show One Of Ancient Egypt’s First Rulers
  • Alzheimer’s-Linked Protein Levels “20 Times Higher” In Newborn Babies – What Does This Mean?
  • Americans Were Asked If They Thought Civil War Was Coming. The Results Were Unexpected
  • Voyager 1 & 2 Could Be Detected From Almost A Light-Year Away With Our Current Technology
  • Dams Have Nudged Earth’s Poles By Over 1 Meter In The Past 200 Years
  • This Sugar Could Be A Cure For Male Pattern Baldness – And It’s Been In Our Bodies All Along
  • “Cosmic Immigrants”: Daytime Star Seen In 1604 May Be An “Alien Type Ia Supernova”
  • Ancient Meteor Crater Thought To Be World’s Oldest May Be 800 Million Years Younger Than We Realized
  • Celestial Fish And Chips And A Solar Cataclysm Shortlisted For Astronomy Photographer Of The Year
  • Tortoises Have Feelings Too, Or At Least Moods
  • What Would Happen If You Threw A Paper Airplane Out Of The ISS? New Study Finds Out
  • Tonight Will Be The Perfect Time To Witness The Moon Illusion
  • This Long-Extinct Animal Once Possessed The Sharpest Teeth On Planet Earth
  • Southwestern US Has Been Experiencing Prolonged Droughts Since The 1980s, And Now We Know Why
  • Four New Species Of Blind “Dragon Pseudoscorpions” Discovered In South Korean Caves
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version