SPOILS OF A MOA CEMETERY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 117, 11 February 1941, Page 6

SPOILS OF A MOA CEMETERY

Many Bones At Museum UNEARTHED TN SOUTH ISLAND SWAMP

At the Dominion Museum yesterday the director, Dr. W. R. B. Oliver, and the taxidermist, Mt. Charles Lindsay, were engaged iu cleaning and sorting a collection of more than WOO moa bones, excavated by Dr. Oliver recently from a swamp near Oamaru. They are now laced with the gigantic jigsaw puzzle of reassembling as far as possible the skeletons of the individual birds to which the bones formerly belonged.

The bones will form a valuable addition to the Dominion Museum. reference collection of moa bones, hitherto rich iu North Island moa remains, but lacking an extensive collection of South Island specimens. They are of particular Interest to Dr. Oliver, who is an eminent ornithologist, author of a standard book on New Zealand birds, ami Ims made a special study of the moa. Origin of the Bones. Centuries ago the open, rolling hi-l country of the South Island carried an enormous population of these gigantic flightless fowl, bigger than ostriches or any birds alive on earth today. Before the last of them were hunted down by the fearless Maori hunters and their dogs, perhaps it hundred moas perished in a little swamp not 20 yards across where the coast road branches off the main south road near Herbert, 16 miles south of Oamaru. The massive birds, perhaps coming to drink at the brink of what was then a hill lagoon, broke through the crust of the swampland and became engulfed in the bog. Their skeletons were preserved "by the silt and by a deposit of heavy blue clay brought down by the creek feeding the swamp in later years. The bones of many were carried into a miniature gorge at the lower end oi the swamp, where in time there accu mutated an almost solid deposit of moa b °Years ago, an early settler named Patterson selected this spot to sink well. He was surprised, but not greatly interested, to dig up great quantities of moa bones; they were cast aside and the matter forgotten. A few months ago, however, the story was recalled by Lieutenant G. V. Stevenson, who communicated with Dr. Oliver and i was decided to excavate the swamp. Successful Excavation. Dr. Oliver visited Oamaru, and by the co-operation of the local authorities in Oamaru the necessary permission, and facilities for transport and pumping, were obtained. Six men, spent a fortnight digging up the swamp to a depth of seven feet, below which depth no further bones were encountered. Thousands of moa bones were unearthed lying on the ancient lake bed and in ’ the gorge. Dr. Oliver selected nine case-fulls, comprising about half those unearthed, to be brought back t the museum. . ■The bones were encased in a heavy deposit of blue clay pug, which had to be carefully scrubbed from them before they could be properly examined, lhey were mostly in an excellent state of preservation, curiously mottled yitn black markings caused by the carbonized remains of water plants in contact with them. . They appeared to comprise the remains of perhaps 100 moas, young and old, belonging to at least six separate species. They included the tallest, of the moas, the 11-foot Dinorms Maximus, and the massive five-foot-tall Euryapteryx elephantopus, whose enormous leg-bones remind one ofthe, Maori tradition that the moa could kill man or dog with a kick. With them were also remains of the extinct giant rail, and the extinct giant goose,,other notable wingless birds which inhabited New Zealand in the past, as well as bones of the kiwi, which survives. Other large uioa cemeteries have been disinterred iu the same neighbourhood in the past, most important being that at Enfield, a few miles away. The bones from Enfield are now in the Canterbury Museum. It was the perpendicular arrangement of many of the leg-bones in the mud of this deposit which led. scientists to tlie that the birds had met their deaths through becoming inextricably bogged in the swampy ground.