Scientists plan to ‘de-extinct’ half-ton 12-foot bird

The real big bird returns.

A company that claims to have resurrected the dire wolf has unveiled plans to bring back the moa, a long-extinct bird that once towered over people.

The company, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had joined forces with acclaimed “Lord Of The Rings” director Sir Peter Jackson to de-extinct the ancient avian, the largest species of which stood 12-feet tall and weighed more than 500 pounds, Time reported. This flightless bird reportedly inhabited New Zealand until getting hunted to extinction by Māori settlers around 600 years ago, Livescience reported.

Coordinating the ambitious de-extinction campaign is the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, between the main Māori tribe (iwi) on NZ’s South Island and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

“Some of those iconic species that feature in our tribal mythology, our storytelling, are very near and dear to us,” explained Ngāi Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, who is collaborating on the moa’s second coming. “Participation in scientific research, species management, and conservation has been a large part of our activities.”

Jackson, an investor in Colossal who helped bring the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre into the fold, explained that the proposed de-extinction is part of efforts to ensure that “some of the most critically endangered species in Aotearoa/New Zealand are protected for future generations.”

Unfortunately, resurrecting the moa will be quite a bit more difficult than bringing his fantasy creatures to life on the big screen. Experts analogized the process to that of the dire wolf, a long-dead species of canid that scientists resurrected by harvesting DNA from fossil specimens and then filling in the genetic gap with a gray wolf genome — like how frog DNA was used to engineer dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.”

Bringing back the moa is decidedly more challenging as the moa is far more removed from its closest living relatives, emus and a chicken-like bird called the tinamou, than the dire wolf is from the gray wolf.

Whereas dire wolves only split from modern wolf-like canids — the group that includes gray wolves — around 5.7 million years ago, the common ancestor of the moa and tinamou lived 58 million years ago, while the moa and emu predecessor lived 65 million years ago.

During their “time apart,” the moa developed a lot of unique traits that are difficult to duplicate.

To achieve this feat of genetic engineering, the team plans to sequence and reconstruct the genomes of all nine extinct moa species, while also sequencing high-quality genomes of their aforementioned relatives.

The team will then use precursors to sperm and egg cells to Frankenstein a “surrogate bird” from living species and then genetically alter it to resemble a moa.

They plan to introduce the edited calls into the embryonic tinamou or emu inside an egg, after which the cells will hopefully migrate to the embryo’s gonads, changing them so that the females produce eggs and the males produce moa sperm. In theory, that hatchling will then grow up, mate and produce moa chicks.

As of yet, the team is still in the process of selecting said surrogate, although the emu’s size — they can grow up to 6 feet 2 inches tall — makes it a more suitable surrogate than the comparatively runty tinamou, per the researchers.

Unfortunately, the moa egg is also a lot bigger than an emu egg, so this could present another challenge if they were to use the latter as the incubation chamber in which to hatch the hybrid bird.

“A South Island giant moa egg will not fit inside an emu surrogate, so Colossal will have to develop artificial surrogate egg technology,” said Nic Rawlence, director of the Otago Palaeogenetics Lab at the University of Otago in New Zealand and a critic of the moa plan.

Colossal’s chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, explained that they’re exploring “different strategies for artificial egg incubation, which will have application both for moa de-extinction and bird conservation work.”

Of course, there are several criticisms of the project that were directed at prior resurrection campaigns as well.

Critics of the dire wolf project claimed that their so-called dire wolf was still genetically a gray wolf with increased size and a white coat.

Rawlence even believes that “genetically engineering specific genes in an emu to match a moa could have dire developmental consequences.”

Beth Shapiro told Live Science that animal welfare was a priority, explaining, “We thoroughly evaluate health risks of any proposed edit before selecting them for our final list of edits.”

Jackson believes the project has exciting potential when it comes to reviving lost species.

“There’s a lot of science still to be done – but we can start looking forward to the day when birds like the moa or the huia (an extinct NZ bird with a curved bill) are rescued from the darkness of extinction,” he said. “Even the journey will bring incredible insights about the history of this land and enrich discussions as to the potential nature of our future here.”

The moa isn’t the only animal Colossal plans to add to its menagerie of long-dead creatures. The biotech firm has also targeted the woolly mammoth for de-extinction — and is a step closer to its goal after engineering a critter called the woolly mouse.