Recently, a tray of moa bones from our Auckland Museum collection have helped unlock a bigger story about how moa onced lived across Aotearoa. In this blog, Matt Rayner, Senior Researcher, takes us through this research and how studying bones collected decades ago can often answer new and exciting questions.
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In the collections of Auckland Museum sits a shallow tray of moa bones. Catalogued as LB6580, it’s not a complete skeleton, but a partial one: a jumble of leg bones and fragments lovingly arranged and protected in a box.
At first glance, it might not seem like much. But this specimen, collected from Waiotapu in the central North Island in the early 20th century, has helped unlock a bigger story about how moa once lived across Aotearoa.
Just a recap: moa were large, flightless birds found only in Aotearoa. Before people arrived, they ranged from turkey-sized to giants up to three metres tall, living in forests, shrublands, and open country across the islands. They were hunted to extinction after people arrived, but their bones remain and are one of the best ways we can understand the world they lived in.
That’s where museum collections come in. Auckland Museum holds thousands of moa bones gathered over more than a century, from caves, swamps, and dunes across the country. To most people, they might not look like much. But to researchers, each bone holds clues about the life of the animal it came from.
Our recent research, funded in part by the Auckland Museum Cheeseman Fund and published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, focused on one particularly puzzling group of moa: Euryapteryx. Sometimes called the stout-legged or coastal moa, these birds were medium-sized, weighing up to 100 kg, with short, sturdy legs and a stocky build.
They have a complicated scientific history. At different times, scientists have treated them as several species, then as regional forms, and more recently as a single species found across both the North and South Islands even though they can look quite different depending on where they lived.
The tray of bones labelled LB6580 played a small but important part in helping untangle that story. From this single specimen, we were able to do two things: extract ancient DNA from one bone, and measure others to compare size and shape with moa from across the country. What we found was unexpected.
The DNA results were particularly interesting when set against what scientists thought they already knew. Earlier work had shown a broad north–south pattern in moa body size, with birds generally becoming larger further south. This kind of latitudinal trend is common in biology and fits ideas like Bergmann’s rule, where animals in colder climates tend to be bigger to conserve body heat.
And that pattern is real, we see it in Euryapteryx too.
But here’s the catch: it doesn’t reflect how these birds are related. The DNA from LB6580 revealed that this bird from the central North Island was most closely related to moa from the northern South Island, despite differences in size and shape. Across the country, we found the same pattern. Body size and proportions often tracked local environments, but not ancestry. In other words, the bones were telling us how these birds lived, while the DNA was telling us where they came from.
It seems that where these birds lived played a big role in how they looked. Climate, habitat, and landscape can all influence body size and shape. Two groups of moa living in similar environments might end up looking alike, even if they weren’t closely related. At the same time, natural barriers like large rivers such as on the South Islands East coast, could separate populations, allowing them to become genetically distinct even if their bones still looked similar.
This helps explain why scientists have debated moa species for so long. Early researchers, working only with bones, named dozens of species. As methods improved, that number was reduced. Today, most scientists recognise around nine species of moa, but studies like ours show there is still much more to learn.
What makes this research especially exciting is that it relies on museum collections. Bones collected decades ago, often with no idea of their future importance, can now be studied in new ways to ask new questions of old specimens.
And this is just the beginning. Across the Museum, similar work is underway on other animals, from seabirds to reptiles, helping reveal hidden diversity and new insights into New Zealand’s past ecosystems.
So next time you come across a bird skeleton on the beach, it’s worth pausing for a moment. Because bones like these can tell stories far bigger than you might expect.
You can read the full article in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 147, Issue 4, April 2026. View it here.