Overview
The stout-legged moa, Euryapteryx geranoides, was a mid-sized bird at home in forest fringes and scrublands. A considerable amount of fossilised remains of stout-legged moa exist due to the good preservation properties of their habitat and the frequency with which they turn up in Māori middens.
This gave exhibition researchers for Blood, Earth, Fire – Whāngai, Whenua, Ahi Kā and model makers of the stout-legged moa plenty to work with when reconstructing the species. The approach they took was essentially a forensic reconstruction. Every bone of the moa was studied in detail, for articulation (the way the bones fit together) and for muscle attachment.
Studying the way the bones would have articulated allowed researchers to look at the birds’ posture. It turns out that moa did not stand tall like an ostrich – the way they are most often pictured. Instead, they were long, with their heads and necks reaching out directly in front of their bodies. This ‘hunchback’ posture meant moa could not have browsed the tops of trees as was previously thought, but fed on undergrowth.
Looking at where the muscles once attached to the bones, researchers could get an idea of how stocky the bird was. This stout-legged moa species was surprisingly heavily built – much more so than the other species we know about. From new genetic analysis, researchers also know that the females weighed about twice as much as males, making them very big ‘girls’ indeed.
The model makers also took incredible care with the face, first measuring the fragile skulls in Te Papa’s collection room and then recreating them in plasticine (modelling clay). Once this step was finished, they went back to their workshop and began the painstaking process of ‘fleshing out’ the model with more plasticine where muscles would have been on the head.
The skin texture was modelled either by taking impressions from mummified moa (in the case of the feet) or by referring back to the moa’s closest living relatives, the cassowary and emu.
Te Papa is fortunate enough to have some moa feathers in its collection, probably over a thousand years old. From these, the model makers were able to dye emu feathers to give them the right look before carefully applying them to the finished model.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (2006)