In Search of the Moa

Fiordland's a huge place you know...go for a stroll through the scrub there, see if you get through there — how could anyone say there's no moa around?

– Fiordland local Kevin wouldn't be surprised if there's a moa or two still living in the Fiordland bush

This massive bird had leg bones like those of a horse, and for millions of years moa strode through the landscape dwarfing all other bird species...

– Narrator John Bach on the powerful presence of New Zealand's native moa

I think Paddy handles the truth carelessly sometimes...

– Helicopter pilot Colin Tuck on hotelier Paddy Freaney's claim he spotted a moa in deep Fiordland bush

The issue of cloning is something that might happen eventually of course...it would be very foolish to rule it out as a possibility ever, but we've got to be mindful of how fast science moves. Many people even today wouldn't believe what we're doing in comparison to five years ago...

– A Massey University scientist on the possibility of cloning the DNA of moa

We're sitting there and you could just feel it eh, feel the age. And we started thinking 'man, these things are thousands of years old...to hold something like that, when you hold it...how they moved and ate, how they lived'.

– Farming contractor Taylor on discovering 1000-year-old fossilised moa bones in a cave in Hawke's Bay

When I first started looking at the Canterbury Museum collections, there were many skeletons ... built by [Sir Julius von Haast] and others in the nineteenth century. By built, what I mean is they had gone into a swamp and pulled out thousands of bones ... joined them up and said this is a skeleton. There was very often bones of three species in that pile.

– Palaeontologist Trevor Worthy on early exhibits of mixed moa skeletons at Canterbury Museum, Stuff, 11 July 2020