Fossil vertebrate research

Te Papa's fossil vertebrate curator has two main research focuses:

1) New Zealand/Aotearoa has lost 25 per cent of its pre-human bird fauna, such as moa, since human colonisation.  Research on the collections is helping to document these human interactions and providing new information for wildlife managers working on threatened species recovery programmes.

2) Research on 16-19 million year old lake fossils from Otago is discovering much about the origins and evolutionary history of the country's unique vertebrate fauna.  This is the oldest terrestrial vertebrate fauna known from the country and it is revealing many startling and unexpected animals - many new species from the distant past have been discovered.  There is an active collection programme from these deposits with annual field work undertaken.