ARTICLES
The Skeleton in the Closet
By Eugene Kwok and Dr Jacqueline Nguyen
Solving the mystery of the museum ’ s moa :
A large fossil pelvis and seven attached vertebrae were discovered decades ago hanging in an old locker in the Australian Museum . Nothing was known about these bones except that they belong to a moa , a large , extinct flightless bird that was unique to New Zealand . There were nine species of moa , ranging in weight from 12 to 250 kg . What species of moa did these bones come from ? We did a bit of detective work to find out .
We began by studying the morphology of the mysterious fossil and compared it with moa specimens in the Museum ’ s palaeontology collection . This allowed us to narrow down the fossil ’ s identity to one of the three species in the moa genus Pachyornis .
After hanging in a locker for many years , the moa fossil has now found a new home in the Museum ’ s Palaeontology collection .
Fossil pelvis and vertebrae of an ancient Moa View full size
Two species of New Zealand Moa View full size
Eugene Kwok is a Denison Research Scholarship student , University of Sydney
Jacqueline Nguyen restoring the ancient moa pelvis and vertebrae
Dr Jacqueline Nguyen is a Research Scientist ( Ornithology and Palaeontology ) at the AMRI .
Based on the dark sediment that had been stuck to the fossil , we could tell that the moa came from a swampy environment . We used X-ray diffraction to find out what minerals were present in the sediment . This revealed the presence of the mineral mica , which is typical of moa fossil sites on the South Island of New Zealand .
Together , all of these pieces of evidence suggest that the fossil is from a Heavy-footed Moa ( Pachyornis elephantopus ). This was one of the largest species of moa , weighing up to 163 kg , and went extinct about 500 to 600 years ago .
This article was first published by the Australian Museum Research Institute on 20th April , 2018 .
SEN and the Science Teachers ’ Association of NSW are grateful to the Australian Museum and its Research Staff for permitting us to republish several of its many fine scientific articles . We also thank the authors , Eugene Kwok and Jacqueline Nguyen , for supplying this article .
38 SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 2