Flightless bird extinct for more than 700 years can be brought back to life, say scientists

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.

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