The little bush moa inhabited
parts of New Zealand and went extinct in the late 13th century as a result of
overhunting.
By : Pinaz Kazi
February 28, 2018 19:00 IST
Scientists are a step closer to
bringing back a species of flightless bird that has been extinct for almost 700
years. The little bush moa that inhabited parts of New Zealand went abruptly
extinct as a result of overhunting in the late 13th century.
A team of researchers from
Harvard University has assembled a nearly-complete genome of the extinct moa by
extracting ancient DNA from the toe bone of a moa specimen held at the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
The scientists now believe that
they are closer to the goal of "de-extinction" — the vanished species can be brought back to life by
slipping the genome into the egg of a living species, Statnews reported.
"High throughput sequencing
has revolutionized the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) by facilitating recovery of
nuclear DNA for greater inference of evolutionary processes of extinct species
than is possible from mitochondrial DNA alone," according to the study.
The little bush moa was a part of
the palaeognathae clade of birds and birds, and those like the kiwi, ostrich,
and emu were considered its cousins. There were nine species of the moa but all
of them are extinct now.
No comments:
Post a Comment