How scientists plan to ‘resurrect' the extinct South Island giant moa
The project is backed by Lord of the Rings filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson, who has provided $15 million (£11m) in funding, and includes the New Zealand -based Ngāi Tahu Research Centre.
Scientists aim to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the moa within five to 10 years, starting by extracting DNA from well-preserved bones.
This marks Colossal's first attempt to de-extinct a bird, presenting unique challenges compared to their previous work with designer grey wolves.
The initiative faces controversy from some scientists who question the feasibility of reintroducing extinct species and worry it may divert focus from protecting existing wildlife.
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The Independent
15 hours ago
- The Independent
How scientists plan to ‘resurrect' the extinct South Island giant moa
Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based company, is attempting to resurrect the extinct South Island giant moa, a 12-foot-tall bird, through genetic engineering. The project is backed by Lord of the Rings filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson, who has provided $15 million (£11m) in funding, and includes the New Zealand -based Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. Scientists aim to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the moa within five to 10 years, starting by extracting DNA from well-preserved bones. This marks Colossal's first attempt to de-extinct a bird, presenting unique challenges compared to their previous work with designer grey wolves. The initiative faces controversy from some scientists who question the feasibility of reintroducing extinct species and worry it may divert focus from protecting existing wildlife.
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
Scientists try to bring 12-foot tall giant bird back from 600-year extinction
A Texas -based company with backing from Lord of the Rings film-maker Sir Peter Jackson is trying to bring a giant bird back from extinction. Colossal Biosciences has announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa, which once stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall, with $15 million (£11m) in funding from Sir Peter. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand -based Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. It is not the first time they have tried to resurrect a species; scientists at Colossal successfully bred designer gray wolves with genetic similarities to the extinct dire wolf. But it is the first time they have tried to raise a bird, which, given that bird embryos develop inside eggs, presents different challenges to mammalian IVF. Colossal says it aims to resurrect the species within five to 10 years. The first stage of the project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, said Colossal's chief scientist Beth Shapiro. Those DNA sequences will be compared to genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, 'to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds,' she said. The genetically modified birds will then be hatched out and released into enclosed 'rewilding sites', the company says. 'The hope that within a few years, we'll get to see a moa back again – that gives me more enjoyment and satisfaction that any film ever has,' says Sir Peter, who has collected between 300 and 400 mao bones himself. 'The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do. Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa.' But the idea is not without controversy. Outside scientists say the idea of bringing back extinct species onto the modern landscape is likely impossible, although it may be feasible to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits. They have mixed feelings on whether that will be helpful, and some worry that focusing on lost creatures could distract from protecting species that still exist. The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Lord of the Rings director wants to resurrect extinct giant flightless bird
Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson plans to spend millions on resurrecting a giant flightless bird that was hunted to extinction 500 years ago in New Zealand. The 63-year-old believes it is possible to bring back the moa, at 10-12ft once the tallest bird on Earth, centuries after the creature was killed off by Maori hunters. The moa had sturdy legs and a long neck, and lived on a diet of leaves, twigs and fruit. They used to inhabit a vast swathe of New Zealand from the coast to the mountains. New Zealander Sir Peter has teamed up with Dallas-based Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences in an attempt to bring his country's lost giant back to life, almost Jurassic Park-like. It is the company which earlier this year claimed to have 'de-extincted' the dire wolf, when it announced the birth of three pups. Sir Peter, who is estimated to be worth £1.3 billion, has not only invested £11 million in the company, but he has made available his private collection of 400 moa bones. Using the DNA from the bones and that of the nearest surviving relatives, such as the emu and the South American tinamou, Colossal believes it can genetically engineer a moa. 'The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,' Sir Peter said. 'There were probably 150,000 giant moa walking around,' he added. 'We don't want to release them into the wild and we don't want to put them into zoos. We want to be able to give the moa a natural environment as big as we possibly can'. It is not just the moa and dire wolf on Colossal's agenda, Sir Peter added. 'The Colossal team is working diligently towards bringing back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and many other extinct animals – that hitherto only lived in our imagination,' he said. 'We're on the eve of de-extinction stepping out of the realm of speculative science fiction, into an awe-inspiring new reality.' Other eyebrow-raising achievements claimed by Colossal include developing 'woolly mice' with traits of the woolly mammoth by using the genes of Asian elephants. Experts voiced doubts that the moa could be brought back from extinction. 'It's not possible to de-extinct things,' Vincent Lynch, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Buffalo, in the US, told The Telegraph. 'Technically, given enough time, I think they can probably do what they say that they're going to do, which is genetically engineer an emu to have some moa-like traits 'But that doesn't make it a moa – that makes it a transgenic emu,' he added. 'The genetic engineering part is challenging, I think that they would have to create a sort of artificial egg to grow it in. I don't know that that's been done before, so they would have to invent that. 'The genetic engineering approach that they're going to use has been done before, but not at this scale and not in an emu.'
