Maori legend of man-eating bird is true
Creature that features in New Zealand folklore really existed, scientists say
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A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have "raced the hawk to the heavens". Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago, shows their study in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Haast's eagle (Harpagornis moorei) was discovered in swamp deposits by Sir Julius von Haast in the 1870s. But it was at first thought to be a scavenger because its bill was similar to a vulture's with hoods over its nostrils to stop flesh blocking its air passages as it rooted around inside carcasses.
But a re-examination of skeletons using modern technology, including CAT scans, by researchers at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch and the University of New South Wales in Australia showed it had a strong enough pelvis to support a killing blow as it dived at speeds of up to 80kph.
With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller's sea eagle. And the bird's talons were as big as a tiger's claws. "It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum. "They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine."
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. "In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said.
New Zealand has no native land mammals because it became isolated from other continents in the Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago. As a result, birds filled niches usually populated by large mammals such as deer and cattle. "Haast's eagle wasn't just the equivalent of a giant predatory bird," said Dr Scofield. "It was the equivalent of a lion." The eagle is thought to have died out after the arrival, 1,000 years ago, of humans, who exterminated the giant moa. The latest study shows it was a recent immigrant to the islands, related to the little eagle (Aquila morphnoides) an Australian bird weighing less than 1kg.
Remains of Haast's eagles are rare because there never were many. They lived only on New Zealand's South Island, with probably not more than 1,000 breeding pairs at any one time.
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Comments
It may not be a stark or obvious implication of the evidence but then by the same logic, neither would evolution by random DNA mutation and non-random selection pressures be an implication.
Animals select mates based on criteria - those selections of favorable traits would constitute a design. The natural selection part is the bad designs (poor choices of successive generations of parents) offspring losing out.
To give a contrived example - If I keep giving you random colors of paint, 3 at a time and you can pick or pass - you can come up with whatever color you want eventually, whether or not it's a 'good color' is another story.
The point of scientific nomenclature is that it should preclude the requirement of imagination in interpretation!
Of course going with the commonly-accepted theory isn't always indicative of truth, but we go with what the evidence favours until we have a better hypothesis - this is called progress. If you want to read articles that give equal weighting to flat and round earth theories, or oxygen and phlogiston, then fine; however, I imagine most readers will want to read something that is as useful and informative as it can be.
To equate alternatives of evolution to flat earth theories is also a fallacious false association based on a strawman. If any progress is to actually be made, people need to get past this and actually learn something about what they are critiquing.
Here here!
There are caves full of super large eggs which were used by early humans as containers. The very large birds became extinct. Man's had a habit of causing extinctions . . . .
Incidently I saw another nature program about the terror bird which was present in South America and gradually migrated to North America when the isthmus of Panama served as a land bridge for animal species. The terror bird, like the moa was a groand dwelling bird, but it was a fierce carnivore which had a hooked, nail like upper beak which had the strength to go through bone and muscle.
Were you there?
Why all the fight about the island, Archipelago and the rest.
A soldier ran up to a nun. Out of breath he asked,'Please, may I hide under your skirt. I'll explain later.' The nun agreed. A moment later two Military Police ran up
and asked, Sister, have you seen a soldier?'
The nun replied, 'He went that way.'
After the MPs ran off, the soldier crawled out from under her skirt and said, 'I can't thank you enough Sister. You see, I don't want to go to Iraq ..'
The nun said, 'I understand completely.'
The soldier added, 'I hope I'm not rude, but you have a great pair of legs!' The nun replied, 'If you had looked a little higher, you would have seen the finest wedding tackle...I don't
want to go to Iraq either.'
And you believe all the stories of UFOs and the tourism attraction in the above manner?
I THANK YOU
FIROZALI A MULLA
GO PETER GO!!!