Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
nosaurs in New Zealand, yet were alive when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote
Canterbury
Tales
. Considering their sizes, abundance, and wide geographic ranges, moas must
haveworndeeptrailsthroughoutthelandscapesofNewZealandandlefteasilyvis-
ible browse lines along forest borders. Thanks to their coprolites, we even know
what plants they ate and in which ecosystems, described in a 2013 study done by
Jamie Wood and other scientists. Like the elephant birds in Madagascar, though,
they fell victim to the ways of humans, and were extinct by the end of the 15th cen-
tury.
Luckily, New Zealand still holds some examples of unique avian legacies, in-
cluding some of the strangest birds in the world and some unusual avian traces.
Among these birds are the flightless kiwis, consisting of five species of
Apteryx
.
These birds are nocturnal foragers, eating a wide variety of plant materials, inver-
tebrates, and small vertebrates, which they locate with nostrils on the ends of their
beaks; no other bird has such an unusual adaptation. Female kiwis also stand out
from other avians by having two ovaries, sharing nesting burrows with males for as
longastwentyyears,andlayingasingleeggthatcantakeupone-thirdoftheirbody
volume and one-fourth of their weight.
Two other New Zealand birds, the kea (
Nestor notabilis
) and the kakapo
(
Strigops habroptilus
), are examples of parrots that evolved in unexpected ways.
Although we normally think of parrots as subtropical-tropical birds flitting about
in rainforests, keas live in alpine environments—hopping along easily on icy gla-
ciers—and kakapos are flightless, nocturnal, and the largest of all parrots. Kakapos
also have odd mating rituals that involve traces. Male kakapos dig a series of half-
meter (20 in) wide bowl-like depressions that they use like megaphones to project
their mating calls. They further link these depressions by making tens-of-meters-
long trails between them—made by their compulsive need to clean out their “amp-
lifiers,” which prompts them to walk constantly between them.
The point of this all-too-short stroll through the evolutionary history of birds
and a glimpse at some of their ichnology is to emphasize how birds, despite the ex-
