Dinornis

Dinornis, also known as the giant moa, is an extinct genus of birds belonging to the moa family. As with other moa, it is a member of the order Dinornithiformes. It was endemic to New Zealand. Two species of Dinornis are considered valid, the North Island giant moa and the South Island giant moa. In addition, two further species have been suggested based on distinct DNA lineages.

Dinornis

Natural History Museum, London · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
DinornithidaePBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB
Mass
278 kgWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 4 of 18 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 14 of 18 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 15 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

18 occurrences of Dinornis on record, most of them in the Holocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

18 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Hillgrove — 45.13°S, 170.97°E

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The named rock units Dinornis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Dinornis and its relatives

Holocene

Where Dinornis and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

145 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Dinornis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

5 references

Each of the 18 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Dinornis

Credit
Natural History Museum, London
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itDinornithidae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1843