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No extinction is as well documented as that of the New Zealand Moa (pronounced mo-ah).

It was a large flightless bird of the order Dinornithiformes. Weighing up to 250Kg and 2.5 metres high, it was hunted to extinction by the Maoris by about 400 years ago.

The Moa occupied the ecological niche in New Zealand of the antelope, rhinoceros and kangaroo and lived in habitats from forest to alpine tundra.

They were abundant when the Maoris arrived in New Zealand about 1,000 years ago. However there is no real evidence to show that the Maori people were solely responsible for their extinction. It was thought that Moa were easy to catch due to a lack of natural predators although the Harpogonis Eagle was thought to be the main natural predator.

Dr Tim Flannery's book, "The Future Eaters" gives a good account of the extinction of the Moa and he quotes "Prodigious Birds" by Atholl Anderson as a "splendid work on the Moa". Atholl Anderson was also famous for proclaiming that polynesians somehow accidently discovered polynesian islands through his drift theory. This has been disparoved over a decade ago.

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14y ago
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14y ago

The extinction of the Moa (a large flightless bird in New Zealand) is thought to have been initiated after the arrival of the Maori to the island in about 1300 CE. The date of the final Moa's death is unknown. General supposition is that it happened within a hundred years of the Maori's arrival but there are unconfirmed reports of Moas in the 18th and 19th centuries in the remote parts of the island.

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15y ago

The moa is extinct because of the Haast eagle(The biggest eagle in the world) It killed it for food.

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14y ago

Because they were easy to see so that then the Maoris could capture them and then eat them. They also are extinct because of the haste's eagle that also ate them

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10y ago

The Moa was a bird that lived in New Zealand. there were nine species of Moa, and all are thought to have been extinct by 1400 A.D.

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14y ago

Yup , since A.D. circa 1400

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14y ago

The Maori hunted them to extinction

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Q: How did moa become extinct?
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