More than three decades after Jurassic Park first terrified and enthralled moviegoers, de-extinction is alive and well. At the theater, Jurassic World Rebirth (the seventh film in the Jurassic franchise) is dominating at the box office, and in the real-world, biotech company Colossal Biosciences just announced its most recent endeavor: the de-extinction of New Zealand’s South Island Giant Moa.
Given the limitations of our technologies and, more importantly, the degradation of DNA over time, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a living non-avian dinosaur. But a 12-foot, 500-pound bird (it’s worth remembering that birds ARE dinosaurs) is the next best thing, and a real possibility.
The South Island Giant Moa was one of the biggest birds to ever live
Moa were a group of flightless birds native to New Zealand for millions of years. There were at least nine species, ranging in size. The smallest were about the same size as a turkey, while the largest would have towered over today’s tallest birds. The largest species, the South Island Giant Moa, stood about 6.5-feet tall at the back, and could loom more than 12-feet tall with the neck outstretched. At least, the females got that big. Males were roughly half that size.
Most of the time, they probably kept their heads lowered, at about back level, allowing them to graze along the ground more easily. However, they probably used their long necks just like a giraffe, to graze at the tops of tall trees. They filled various ecological niches depending on their species and location, grazing and foraging widely on a variety of seeds, fruits, leaves, and grasses.
Like some other birds, they digested their fibrous diet with the help of stones in their stomachs. Giant moas could have more than 6 pounds of rocks in their bellies, with individual stones as large as 4-inches across. Not much is known about how they reproduced or lived, because they didn’t overlap with people for very long. Moa lived on New Zealand for between 5 and 10 million years and were gone within a century or two of human arrival.
Unlike other large flightless birds which still retain vestigial wings, moa were completely wingless. They took about 10 years to reach maturity and laid one egg at a time. That egg was especially thin and fragile, which is where the smaller males came in handy. Scientists suspect males incubated the eggs to lower the risk of breakage.
Colossal wants to de-extinct the South Island Giant Moa, in partnership with the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre
While Colossal’s previous projects, including the Colossal Woolly Mouse and the Colossal Dire Wolves, were entirely under the company’s control, the moa project is a partnership between the biotech company and the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, with a little nudge from the guy who made The Lord of the Rings.
“Kyle [Kyle Davis, Ngāi Tahu Research Centre archaeologist] has taken our team on excavations into caves to actually see moa bones. We’re working on additional exhibitions where we’ll do sampling, Paul, [Paul Scofield, Senior Curator of Natural History at Canterbury Museum] is arguably the number one Moa researcher in the world, and has brought Canterbury Museum to the table. And all of this was facilitated by, you know, Sir Peter Jackson. Peter got us all together, got us all talking,” Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told SYFY WIRE.
While Colossal will provide tools, technologies, and lessons learned from previous projects, the entire moa project is under the direction of the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. “The Naitaya Research Center is calling the shots, not just for the work on the South Island Giant Moa, but also for subsequent species that we may want to Biobank and other tools and applications, as it relates to conservation,” Lamm said.
That might mean this project moves a little more slowly or operates differently from what Colossal has done before. While Colossal’s de-extinction pipeline has been established and the company has been working on birds for a while with an eye toward the de-extinction of the dodo, the moa project is still in the beginning stages.
The process of de-extinction Colossal has laid out looks something like this: get samples of ancient DNA, as many as possible. Sequence those samples and build a reference genome. Compare that genome to closely related species and identify key genes. Edit those genes in an embryo using multiplex editing.
Finally, the embryo is implanted in a surrogate. That also assumes scientists figure out how to reliably clone birds, a problem which hasn’t yet been cracked. In the meantime, the team is busily collecting samples and sequencing the DNA. Lamm suspects they’ll have the South Island Giant Moa’s genome in the next year.
“The good thing about the moas is that the museums and others have incredibly well-preserved samples. There’s many moa bones in caves, and caves are great places. Cold, dry places are great places for DNA, and moas went extinct about 600 years ago. It’s not like we’re dealing with DNA that’s 50,000 years old, right? And so based on our DNA assembly. I feel very, very confident,” Lamm said.
Giant moa will have to live somewhere, and you might be able to see them
The genome is just the beginning. We’ve been cloning mammals successfully since the birth of Dolly in 1996, but cloning birds is a different sort of magic trick. Bird germ cells are just harder to get at. Once researchers have a moa genome, it’s not totally clear what to do with it. That’s something researchers are working on.
Lamm noted that Colossal has succeeded in producing emu PGCs (primordial germ cells) in the lab and hinted at some additional news on the bird cloning front in the near future. Assuming everything goes to plan, these animals will need someplace to live, and the world has changed quite a bit in the last 600 years.
“There’s going to be a set of assessment processes, land assessments, and biogeographic assessments that are going to help inform that sort of decision making,” Kyle Davis told SYFY WIRE. “We have a number of tribal land blocks at various altitudes; our little island down here is very diverse. But we have a number of tribal lands and access to other lands that could qualify or definitely qualify for the assessment phase. But we’ll definitely be leaning on the ecologists and their assessments to help us determine that. But it’s our goal hopefully that there can be some form of facility established on our own tribal properties.”
All of that is still in the future and at the discretion and direction of the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, but Lamm didn’t discount the possibility that you might have a chance to see moa for yourself in the future. He avoided the word “park,” citing its cinematic associations, but talked about a secure environment, not unlike the one housing the Colossal dire wolves, and reiterated the control of the research center and local indigenous groups.
“If you’ve been to the South Island in New Zealand, or you’ve seen any of Peter Jackson’s movies, you have this vibe for what New Zealand is, and it is truly unimaginable and so much ecotourism is driven in the economy there, especially the South Island. So, if people are going to the South Island to see these incredible landscapes that are literally out of this world, and they can also see beautiful ecology that benefits the local communities, if that’s something that the Ngāi Tahu wants to do, then we obviously would be in full support of it,” Lamm said.
But why wait? You can see dinosaurs right now in Jurassic World Rebirth, in theaters everywhere!
