What do you think?
Rate this book
Moa: The Life and Death of New Zealand's Legendary Bird
The moa were the most unusual and unique family of birds that ever lived, a clan of feathered monsters that developed in isolation for many, many millions of years. They became extinct reasonably quickly after the arrival of the Maori, and were a distant memory by the time European explorers arrived. So the discovery and identification of their bones in the 1840s was a worldwide sensation, claimed by many to be the zoological find of the century.
This book begins by recounting the story of discovery, which was characterised by an unbelievable amount of controversy and intrigue. Since then there has been an unbroken chain of new discoveries, culminating with intriguing revelations in recent years about the moa’s biology, that have come to light through DNA testing and radio-dating.
This is a fascinating and important book that richly recounts the life and death of our strangest bird. Packed with a fantastic range of illustrations, Moa fills an important gap in our natural history literature, a popular but serious book on this national icon.
This book begins by recounting the story of discovery, which was characterised by an unbelievable amount of controversy and intrigue. Since then there has been an unbroken chain of new discoveries, culminating with intriguing revelations in recent years about the moa’s biology, that have come to light through DNA testing and radio-dating.
This is a fascinating and important book that richly recounts the life and death of our strangest bird. Packed with a fantastic range of illustrations, Moa fills an important gap in our natural history literature, a popular but serious book on this national icon.
300 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2012
158 people want to read
About the author
Quinn Berentson
1 book1 followerQuinn Berentson is a writer, documentary film maker and photographer. After graduating with a B.Sc. Honours from Otago University he began writing and directing children's educational television, before moving to Natural History New Zealand, where he wrote, directed and produced documentaries, working for such clients as Discovery Channel, National Geographic and Animal Planet. He continues to do this alongside other writing projects. He is based in Dunedin.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 14, 2013
This book seems to come out of nowhere - first book by Quinn Berentson, who has no salient publication record in history, natural history, archeology, paleontology, or whatever, no salient publication record at all. It comes in lavish format, a physical production by Craig Potton Publishing that revives your faith in serious book publication. I bought my copy for the exceedingly reasonable price of $50 at UBS in Dunedin; the price is much higher in the US. Are you kidding me, a hardback book of this production value for $50 NZ? And this author, Berentson, evidently he's a freelancer, with graduate training in science communication from the University of Otago. What he has fashioned is an intellectual history of the moa. The people who have pursued the moa, intellectually, from the great Professor Owen on, are fascinating individuals with fascinating flaws. They are treated as such by Berentson, but always with discretion and sagacity, so that the intellectual drama never descends into melodrama. Moa is a landmark contribution to history and natural history in Aotearoa.
December 31, 2019
This book was a challenge to get hold of, but worth the effort and cost. It was everything I could have wanted in a book about my favorite giant extinct bird. It was well written, well organized, comprehensive, and absolutely fascinating. I learned so much, not just about the moa, but also about science history - from the Victorian age through the present, and New Zealand history - from geologic, ecologic, and anthropological perspectives. It was written in such an accessible way, providing appropriate context, illustrations, and flavor, that I expect the things I learned will stick with me longer than most fact-heavy science books do. The only problem is that it left me wanting moa.
July 18, 2025
I have had this book in my TBR pile for TWELVE YEARS and I'm so glad I never culled it and finally got to it, because it was fascinating. Full of scientific battles and interesting paleoarcheology and heart break over the wonders we have lost.
September 13, 2025
If there has ever been a real Hell on Earth it was surely the "moa meatworks" where these iconic animals, too simple and unafraid of humans to comprehend their fate, were killed by the thousands, the entire population taking probably less than 3 generations to be fully exterminated throughout the entire country. The majority of "moa processing facilities," remarkably complex and sophisticated given their hasty construction with only stone-age tools available, were occupied for less than 50 years before the entire moa population in the area was destroyed. At many sites such as the upper North Island it took less than a decade for the entire moa population to be wiped out in a "blitzkreig" of near-constant overkill, to the point that there were piles of surplus remains simply left to rot.
The birds themselves, having had dominion over the land for millions of years without any mammalian predators much less coordinated human hunters with sophisticated stone tools and fire, were totally unprepared for the slaughter. They are described in what scant Maori records remain as unafraid of humans, gentle and slow-moving creatures who followed the same beaten tracks in the bush day after day year after year. Hounded by packs of kuri, Polynesian dogs bred specially for their powerful jaw and neck muscles to corral big game, stuck from all sides with spears until forced into fire or otherwise a waiting flax noose, these long-lived and slow-moving animals never had any chance of adapting to their new enemy:
The moa was "long-lived and painfully slow to breed, each slaughtered breeding adult was a loss the population could not stand, especially since both the mature breeding females and their eggs were the first to be targeted." [250]
When the first Europeans explored the empty scrub desert of central Otago they thought it had been made that way by ancient geological processes and likewise that the moa remains they found were ancient fossils as old as the mammoth or sabre-toothed tiger. In fact they were handling bones of animals which were slaughtered at an advanced industrial scale only a few centuries prior, at the same time as Marco Polo and Columbus, and the barren grass deserts that were their resting place had only centuries before been thriving rainforest growing over millions of years, burnt down to nothing by the moa hunters in a few short centuries. As the Europeans gouged out the earth to make farmland and mineral mines and to unearth the mummified remains of those giant birds they would render down the landscape even further until not even the trace semblance of what had once been remained. The course of human history revealed in books like these always leaves me with that most unpopular cringe sentiment of all - that there is just something fundamentally evil in human nature, that all our history is driven by blind violence which we re-enact again and again until there's nothing left. So the rainforest, so the moa, so the Maori, so the Earth we live on - so it goes, so it goes.
Today this kind of pessimistic idea of history and of human nature is often rebuked for being unhelpful, even hopeless, and we are beset on all quarters by the supposed urgency of "imagining a better world." But that's all it is really; imaginary.
In 2025 Tomlinson et al. published a study titled "Was extinction of New Zealand's avian megafauna an unavoidable consequence of human arrival?" in which they discovered that in order to sustain a live moa population for even one or two centuries longer the first Maori would have had to be impossibly far-seeing and impossibly generous in their allocation of vital, resource-rich land:
In a perfect world the first human settlers of New Zealand would maintain an inter-tribal, inter-generational agreement to sacrifice 50% of their countrys best land to preserve a big bird for future generations. In a perfect world the first European settlers would have granted full legal sovereignty over New Zealand to Maori tribes for self-governance, would have accepted apriori the right of indigenous people to the lands they occupied. But that world never existed. You know, and I know, that it never could have happened. Adorno said it best, as always:
I would much rather live in the world where thoughtful and considered principles took precedent over immediate action but as a human being I know we never were and never will be like that. The engine of history and all human ingenuity has, across all cultures, been the insatiable will, that blank-eyed infinite hunger which can't be filled, which will leave mountains of surplus moa carcasses rotting at the edge of the village, which will turn the earth we live on into a polluted stretch of cement because it isn't oriented to any real goal or morality and will, just in the directionless urge to go beyond.
I think that hopeless yearning for a world that doesn't exist, for a history and human nature which doesn't exist, is what makes cryptozoological accounts of extinct animals like moa or thylacines so compelling and so haunting. They represent an elegiac poetic wish not just for something to be true (for the moa to still exist) but for something not to be true (that our nature and our history is one of all-profaning violence with no limits and no signs of slowing down). It is beautiful and wistfully hopeful reading the colonial-era stories of ghost-like moa tromping through some section of unexplored West Coast forest. But Berentson's book doesn't linger on those because ultimately we must live in this reality, the only one that really happened. As Berentson reflects on the various native plants that evolved via their relationship to the now-absent moa, such as the lancewood, which has a uniquely alien life cycle, beginning in a spiny leathery form to deter moa browsing until it reaches a certain height at which point it metamorphoses into a normal-looking tree:
"Having spent millions of years evolving to defend themselves against moa browsing, the giant birds disappeared so recently that the tree has not had time to adjust. Now increasingly urban warriors, the young lancewoods stand guard over traffic islands and supermarket car parks, defending themselves against an enemy they no longer have and still waging the slow war." [211]
I leave this book with an almost painful sense of yearning. I would rather not live in this one and only real world. Sometimes I would like to live in the world that could never was, where the moa still follow the same beaten tracks through the ancient rainforest which will never be razed, see the moa herds yearly migration to the beaches where no stone rendering plants will ever be built. I wish I could see, in the flesh, the most poignant image in the book, where Berentson explains how the massively heavy moa incubated its thin-shelled fragile eggs:
"[R]ather than sitting directly upon their eggs, male moa curled up around them." [215].
"The bone yards of the eastern coast of the South Island not only provide crystal-clear evidence that moa were hunted in enormous numbers, but also preserve ample detail of exactly how their giant carcasses were butchered and cooked. [...] At the Shag River camp archaeologists found the moa must once have been so common and easily hunted that large portions of the carcasses were simply thrown away. One midden contained the heads and necks of 15 moa in a pile right next to a similar heap of 15 pelvises." [p.244]
"The scale of moa hunting camps at Waitaki and Rakaia indicates far more moa were killed and cooked there than the small band of hunters could have possibly eaten themselves." [p.245]
"It was the legs of the moa that were the real prize - the prime cut of a moa would be drumsticks that could have been a meter in length and weighed thirty to forty kilograms - each leg the size of a full-grown pig and able to feed many people. Moa eggs were also obviously popular in some areas - Walter Mantell found hundreds of them smashed in the oven pits at Awamoa, and Murison found a similar camp inland on the Maniototo Plain, suggesting these camps were established near some kind of communal breeding ground." [p. 244]
"[M]oa fat was extracted in large quantities - archaeologists excavated two pits with fire-hardened walls, one a metre and a half across and almost a metre deep, the other much smaller. The two pits were connected by a channel in the earth blocked by a wedge of baked clay, and have been interpreted as a kind of rendering plant for boiling and separating the fat off moa." [245].
The birds themselves, having had dominion over the land for millions of years without any mammalian predators much less coordinated human hunters with sophisticated stone tools and fire, were totally unprepared for the slaughter. They are described in what scant Maori records remain as unafraid of humans, gentle and slow-moving creatures who followed the same beaten tracks in the bush day after day year after year. Hounded by packs of kuri, Polynesian dogs bred specially for their powerful jaw and neck muscles to corral big game, stuck from all sides with spears until forced into fire or otherwise a waiting flax noose, these long-lived and slow-moving animals never had any chance of adapting to their new enemy:
"Judge Maning heard the birds were so stupid and docile that they quietly allowed themselves to be roasted alive by fires without moving[.]" [246].
"Other credible records of moa hunting mention slightly different tactics, such as the use of flax nooses [...] Maori became expert at snaring forest birds and a f;ax noose hung at a cave entrance or on a forest path would have been a particularly effective way to catch moa. The birds moved with their narrow heads and long necks extended forward along predictable paths which made them, in the words of palaeobiologists Trevor Worthy and Richard Holdaway, almost 'pre-adapted to snaring'." [249].
The moa was "long-lived and painfully slow to breed, each slaughtered breeding adult was a loss the population could not stand, especially since both the mature breeding females and their eggs were the first to be targeted." [250]
When the first Europeans explored the empty scrub desert of central Otago they thought it had been made that way by ancient geological processes and likewise that the moa remains they found were ancient fossils as old as the mammoth or sabre-toothed tiger. In fact they were handling bones of animals which were slaughtered at an advanced industrial scale only a few centuries prior, at the same time as Marco Polo and Columbus, and the barren grass deserts that were their resting place had only centuries before been thriving rainforest growing over millions of years, burnt down to nothing by the moa hunters in a few short centuries. As the Europeans gouged out the earth to make farmland and mineral mines and to unearth the mummified remains of those giant birds they would render down the landscape even further until not even the trace semblance of what had once been remained. The course of human history revealed in books like these always leaves me with that most unpopular cringe sentiment of all - that there is just something fundamentally evil in human nature, that all our history is driven by blind violence which we re-enact again and again until there's nothing left. So the rainforest, so the moa, so the Maori, so the Earth we live on - so it goes, so it goes.
Today this kind of pessimistic idea of history and of human nature is often rebuked for being unhelpful, even hopeless, and we are beset on all quarters by the supposed urgency of "imagining a better world." But that's all it is really; imaginary.
In 2025 Tomlinson et al. published a study titled "Was extinction of New Zealand's avian megafauna an unavoidable consequence of human arrival?" in which they discovered that in order to sustain a live moa population for even one or two centuries longer the first Maori would have had to be impossibly far-seeing and impossibly generous in their allocation of vital, resource-rich land:
"Our simulations show that moa rāhui would have needed to be exceptionally large, covering >50 % of the New Zealand land area to prevent moa extinctions. This exceeds the current-day expanse of New Zealand's protected areas by a factor of 1.5[.]"
In a perfect world the first human settlers of New Zealand would maintain an inter-tribal, inter-generational agreement to sacrifice 50% of their countrys best land to preserve a big bird for future generations. In a perfect world the first European settlers would have granted full legal sovereignty over New Zealand to Maori tribes for self-governance, would have accepted apriori the right of indigenous people to the lands they occupied. But that world never existed. You know, and I know, that it never could have happened. Adorno said it best, as always:
"No history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one that leads from the slingshot to the megaton bomb."
I would much rather live in the world where thoughtful and considered principles took precedent over immediate action but as a human being I know we never were and never will be like that. The engine of history and all human ingenuity has, across all cultures, been the insatiable will, that blank-eyed infinite hunger which can't be filled, which will leave mountains of surplus moa carcasses rotting at the edge of the village, which will turn the earth we live on into a polluted stretch of cement because it isn't oriented to any real goal or morality and will, just in the directionless urge to go beyond.
I think that hopeless yearning for a world that doesn't exist, for a history and human nature which doesn't exist, is what makes cryptozoological accounts of extinct animals like moa or thylacines so compelling and so haunting. They represent an elegiac poetic wish not just for something to be true (for the moa to still exist) but for something not to be true (that our nature and our history is one of all-profaning violence with no limits and no signs of slowing down). It is beautiful and wistfully hopeful reading the colonial-era stories of ghost-like moa tromping through some section of unexplored West Coast forest. But Berentson's book doesn't linger on those because ultimately we must live in this reality, the only one that really happened. As Berentson reflects on the various native plants that evolved via their relationship to the now-absent moa, such as the lancewood, which has a uniquely alien life cycle, beginning in a spiny leathery form to deter moa browsing until it reaches a certain height at which point it metamorphoses into a normal-looking tree:
"Having spent millions of years evolving to defend themselves against moa browsing, the giant birds disappeared so recently that the tree has not had time to adjust. Now increasingly urban warriors, the young lancewoods stand guard over traffic islands and supermarket car parks, defending themselves against an enemy they no longer have and still waging the slow war." [211]
I leave this book with an almost painful sense of yearning. I would rather not live in this one and only real world. Sometimes I would like to live in the world that could never was, where the moa still follow the same beaten tracks through the ancient rainforest which will never be razed, see the moa herds yearly migration to the beaches where no stone rendering plants will ever be built. I wish I could see, in the flesh, the most poignant image in the book, where Berentson explains how the massively heavy moa incubated its thin-shelled fragile eggs:
"[R]ather than sitting directly upon their eggs, male moa curled up around them." [215].
December 16, 2023
While this book is more about the history of the study of the moa than the moa itself, it does a fantastic job of telling the tale of how English science met the moa and attempted to unravel its mysteries.
February 7, 2016
Fantastic story of science, scientists, and that strangest of birds - the moa.
April 7, 2020
While crashing through dense forest, many trampers have imagined what it would be like to encounter a moa – the extraordinary, giant flightless birds that once roamed Aotearoa. A few have even believed they have seen one. As late as 1993 three trampers including Paddy Freaney and Rochelle Rafferty saw and photographed a creature in Craigieburn Forest Park that resembled a moa. Freany, then owner of the Bealey Hotel, had life-sized moa replicas made outside the pub, seen by many a tramper at the watering hole after an Arthur’s Pass trip.
Dunedin film-maker and author Quinn Berentson spent four years researching and writing Moa. ‘First we killed them, then we ate them and then we forgot them,’ he writes. While the story of an extinct bird could have been as dry as old bones, Berentson writes it like a science thriller set in Victorian times. There are heroes and villains, scientific rivalries, mystery and adventure. It’s a tremendous read.
The villain, undoubtedly, is Richard Owen, a giant of a man in stature, reputation and nature. Famous as the man who coined the term dinosaur, Owen was one of Victorian England’s most prestigious scientists, an anatomist of stupendous ability. But, as photographs of him seem to underscore, Owen had a jealous nature and maliciously undermined any efforts by others in his chosen field. While others might have done the donkey work – searching, excavating and packaging up the remains of prehistoric creatures – Owen described them in his scientific papers and gained all the glory for himself.
People in nineteenth century Europe were enthralled with natural history, and the idea that giant, three-metre-high birds once roamed the forests of New Zealand excited their imaginations to a frenzy. Owen rode this excitement to fame and flayed any who sought to race against him. One of the collectors who could rightly have claimed credit for the first moa discovery was none other than missionary-naturalist William Colenso. Colenso found bones on the East Coast, described them in a paper accepted by the Tasmanian Natural History Society in 1842, but due to the ‘technical challenges’of reproducing his bone pictures, publication was unfortunately delayed. In the meantime, the predatory Owen got his own moa paper out, swooping in like Haast’s Eagle to extinguish any precedent held by Colenso.
Sadder still is the story of Gideon Mantell, who described the first dinosaur, Iguanodon, and became obsessed with fossil hunting, but was constantly usurped by the wealthier, more influential Owen, who bought specimens from collectors to establish himself as the king of dinosaurs. Gideon worked himself into poverty, ill-health and a failed marriage with his fossil obsession, and his son Walter fled the disfunctional family to New Zealand. There, Walter found some of the best moa bone desposits, and later discovered the first moa processing site, proving once and for all that humans had hunted the giant birds. Walter later brought back his father’s prized Igaunodon fossil to New Zealand, where Te Papa Tongarewa still holds it. Ironically, scores of his moa bones ended in England, but fell into the hands of Owen.
As with any good plot, the bad guy gets his come-uppance, but I won’t reveal that spoiler here. Later, New Zealand scientists began their own collections and studies, sparking an fresh intellectual rivalry between two of the colony’s best known men of science, Julius Haast and James Hector. Their dispute centred on who the original moa hunters were; Maori or an earlier, separate people? The moa tale didn’t end with the Victorian-age scientists, and in the later sections of the book Berentson details the modern story of the bird, including possible sightings. Moa have continued to fire the imgaination, and even featured once as a villan in a 1973 Superman comic strip.
Winner of Royal Society of New Zealand science book prize, and the New Zealand Post award for best first non-fiction book, Berentson has put flesh on the bones of a great story. Craig Potton Publishing has produced a substantial hardback book with a fine design and full-colour illustrations. Referenced and with a good index, Moa is an extremely engaging book and hopes run high for what Berentson might tackle next.
Dunedin film-maker and author Quinn Berentson spent four years researching and writing Moa. ‘First we killed them, then we ate them and then we forgot them,’ he writes. While the story of an extinct bird could have been as dry as old bones, Berentson writes it like a science thriller set in Victorian times. There are heroes and villains, scientific rivalries, mystery and adventure. It’s a tremendous read.
The villain, undoubtedly, is Richard Owen, a giant of a man in stature, reputation and nature. Famous as the man who coined the term dinosaur, Owen was one of Victorian England’s most prestigious scientists, an anatomist of stupendous ability. But, as photographs of him seem to underscore, Owen had a jealous nature and maliciously undermined any efforts by others in his chosen field. While others might have done the donkey work – searching, excavating and packaging up the remains of prehistoric creatures – Owen described them in his scientific papers and gained all the glory for himself.
People in nineteenth century Europe were enthralled with natural history, and the idea that giant, three-metre-high birds once roamed the forests of New Zealand excited their imaginations to a frenzy. Owen rode this excitement to fame and flayed any who sought to race against him. One of the collectors who could rightly have claimed credit for the first moa discovery was none other than missionary-naturalist William Colenso. Colenso found bones on the East Coast, described them in a paper accepted by the Tasmanian Natural History Society in 1842, but due to the ‘technical challenges’of reproducing his bone pictures, publication was unfortunately delayed. In the meantime, the predatory Owen got his own moa paper out, swooping in like Haast’s Eagle to extinguish any precedent held by Colenso.
Sadder still is the story of Gideon Mantell, who described the first dinosaur, Iguanodon, and became obsessed with fossil hunting, but was constantly usurped by the wealthier, more influential Owen, who bought specimens from collectors to establish himself as the king of dinosaurs. Gideon worked himself into poverty, ill-health and a failed marriage with his fossil obsession, and his son Walter fled the disfunctional family to New Zealand. There, Walter found some of the best moa bone desposits, and later discovered the first moa processing site, proving once and for all that humans had hunted the giant birds. Walter later brought back his father’s prized Igaunodon fossil to New Zealand, where Te Papa Tongarewa still holds it. Ironically, scores of his moa bones ended in England, but fell into the hands of Owen.
As with any good plot, the bad guy gets his come-uppance, but I won’t reveal that spoiler here. Later, New Zealand scientists began their own collections and studies, sparking an fresh intellectual rivalry between two of the colony’s best known men of science, Julius Haast and James Hector. Their dispute centred on who the original moa hunters were; Maori or an earlier, separate people? The moa tale didn’t end with the Victorian-age scientists, and in the later sections of the book Berentson details the modern story of the bird, including possible sightings. Moa have continued to fire the imgaination, and even featured once as a villan in a 1973 Superman comic strip.
Winner of Royal Society of New Zealand science book prize, and the New Zealand Post award for best first non-fiction book, Berentson has put flesh on the bones of a great story. Craig Potton Publishing has produced a substantial hardback book with a fine design and full-colour illustrations. Referenced and with a good index, Moa is an extremely engaging book and hopes run high for what Berentson might tackle next.
November 2, 2025
It's difficult to describe how pleasantly surprised I was by this book! I saw it on a shelf in the Dunedin City library and thought, hm, I'd like to learn more about moa, but wow, that looks like an enormous text book that's probably kind of boring and hard to get through. I WAS SO WRONG!
Almost from the get-go, this book is fascinating! A history of *how* moa were discovered to have existed in New Zealand, not just about the birds themselves. You wouldn't believe the amount of drama and intrigue between scientists in England, and New Zealand that centered around the discovery of all the bones the moas left behind. There is Moari history here, early colonial history, and some more modern history as well - I learned about so much more than the moa in this book and I loved every second of it. Berentson has a way of weaving humor into the story that really kept my interest throughout, as did the great photos and illustrations!
One of the best books I've read in the last few years for sure, highly recommend if you're nerdy about New Zealand or extinct species/natural history like I am...and especially if you've never even heard of a moa :)
Almost from the get-go, this book is fascinating! A history of *how* moa were discovered to have existed in New Zealand, not just about the birds themselves. You wouldn't believe the amount of drama and intrigue between scientists in England, and New Zealand that centered around the discovery of all the bones the moas left behind. There is Moari history here, early colonial history, and some more modern history as well - I learned about so much more than the moa in this book and I loved every second of it. Berentson has a way of weaving humor into the story that really kept my interest throughout, as did the great photos and illustrations!
One of the best books I've read in the last few years for sure, highly recommend if you're nerdy about New Zealand or extinct species/natural history like I am...and especially if you've never even heard of a moa :)
July 26, 2021
A thorough and stunning account of Aotearoa's avian kingdom. Hard to find, but according to Potter and Burton the publisher's website, is due for a rerelease later this year.
A must read for anyone hoping to learn more about these fascinating creatures and their tragic encounter with modern humans. Exquisitely presented, this very readable account embraces the current scientific thinking from paleontologists, orinthologists and island ecologists. It is a stunning account of island extinction.
A must read for anyone hoping to learn more about these fascinating creatures and their tragic encounter with modern humans. Exquisitely presented, this very readable account embraces the current scientific thinking from paleontologists, orinthologists and island ecologists. It is a stunning account of island extinction.
May 21, 2016
A history of the history of Moa: how moa were originally brought to the attention of Europeans in the 1830s, and how their understanding developed in the subsequent two centuries. Berentson enjoys portraying the interesting and colourful scientists and adventurers of the 19th century, including Richard Owen, Gideon Mantell, Julius Haast and James Hector.
I was struck by how many moa "hot-spots" there seem to be, mostly in isolated locations I'd never heard of. There are som many it seems a wonder that I don't dig up moa bones every time I plant some potatoes.
Although I learned many things, the one that strikes me is Berentson's reasoned conclusions that, although without doubt most of the moa were dead by 1500 or 1600, some moa may have lived in secluded parts (probably Fiordland) until the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and that, if this were so, they were most likely finished off by stoats or other non-human mammal, rather than by human hunting.
I was struck by how many moa "hot-spots" there seem to be, mostly in isolated locations I'd never heard of. There are som many it seems a wonder that I don't dig up moa bones every time I plant some potatoes.
Although I learned many things, the one that strikes me is Berentson's reasoned conclusions that, although without doubt most of the moa were dead by 1500 or 1600, some moa may have lived in secluded parts (probably Fiordland) until the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and that, if this were so, they were most likely finished off by stoats or other non-human mammal, rather than by human hunting.
September 23, 2013
2. It is a fact book that tells you about the history of the Moa and the story of the brothers that found that bones in a maori tribe and tried to get it out and known by contacting this very prestigious and famous bone collector.
3. The character i found most interesting was 'richard owen' the famous bone collector, mainly because of how intelligent he was but also about how he was notorious for being a rude person that was extremely ugly.
4. I cannot remember any quotes since it was a fact book.
5. I learnt a lot of things about the moa and the history about how it was discovered and publicised.
February 11, 2014
Excellent 'text book' with great illustrations and narrative. How did we kill so many of these awesome creatures in a few short centuries?!
Underlying the animal history is a great take of devious scientists, the rock stars of their time, who ruthlessly berated each others' research, stole, bribed etc in the name of science. That story alone is a movie waiting to be made.
Underlying the animal history is a great take of devious scientists, the rock stars of their time, who ruthlessly berated each others' research, stole, bribed etc in the name of science. That story alone is a movie waiting to be made.
August 31, 2013
An absolutely gorgeous book (we come to expect nothing less from this publisher) and a very interesting read. The science is bang up to date too.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews