Return of the Moa: The audacious science of bringing back a 3-meter bird

There was a time, not so long ago in geological terms, when the forests of New Zealand shook under the weight of something enormous. The moa, flightless, featherless on its neck, standing taller than a basketball hoop, wandered those islands for millions of years before humans arrived and, within a few centuries, hunted it into silence. The largest species stretched past three metres. Its eggs dwarfed anything a living bird lays today. When it disappeared, sometime around 1440 AD, it left behind bones, fossils, and a peculiar absence that scientists have never quite stopped thinking about.

Return of the Moa: The audacious science of bringing back a 3-meter bird. Now a company wants to bring it back. Colossal Biosciences, the Texas-based de-extinction firm that has already staked bold claims on resurrecting the dire wolf and the woolly mammoth, announced this week that it has moved one step closer to hatching a moa. The breakthrough, such as it is being called, involves an artificial eggshell, a silicone membrane designed to mimic the gas exchange of a real egg, letting oxygen in at the same rate nature intended. Colossal says it has already used the system to hatch chickens, and believes it can eventually be scaled up to accommodate something far, far bigger. "We've created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate," said Professor Andrew Pask, Colossal's chief biology officer. The c...