IT MAY be gone, but the moa is not forgotten. Researchers have managed to
sequence all its mitochondrial DNA.
It’s the first time anyone has done this for an extinct animal. Not only is
the work plugging important gaps in the family tree of flightless birds, or
“ratites”, it is also fuelling debate on how the ancient supercontinent of
Gondwanaland broke apart (see maps).
Alan Cooper of the University of Oxford and his colleagues in Britain and
Spain extracted DNA from the fossilised bones of two moas and one elephant bird,
an extinct species from Madagascar. They managed to…
