Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson backs plan to do a Jurassic Park on extinct birds
- Reference: 1752125863
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/07/10/colossal_bioscience_peter_jackson_moa_resurrection/
- Source link:
Readers may remember that Colossal Biosciences has created a [1]“woolly” mouse by using genetic information gathered from woolly mammoths and elephants, a feat it hopes will help it to one day re-create the Woolly Mammoth.
Now the company has teamed with the [2]Ngāi Tahu Research Centre , an indigenous scholarship facility at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury, to bring a bird called the “Moa” back to life.
[3]
The Moa went extinct in the 15th century. New Zealand is thought to have been the last major landmass to be occupied by humans, who upon arrival found no significant predators but many large and slow-moving birds that didn’t perceive people as a threat.
[4]
[5]
The early Polynesian settlers therefore found birds easy to hunt and cleared forests in which they lived. Rats that arrived with the first settlers quickly developed a taste for eggs.
Many New Zealand bird species did not survive.
[6]
But the Moa, and especially the Giant Moa that stood over three meters tall and were probably the biggest ever bird to walk the Earth, live on in the New Zealand imagination. The flightless creatures feature prominently in oral tradition of the Māori people and the biggest specimens exert a dinosaur-esque fascination for some Kiwi kids … and young-at-heart film director Jackson.
[7]
An AI rendering of the South Island Giant Moa - Click to enlarge
“When you’re a New Zealand school kid, the fact that we used to have the biggest bird in the world is pretty exciting. And then you get older, and you go to museums, and you see the skeletons, you start to realize how much it's in the New Zealand psyche, the New Zealand culture,” Jackson remarked to [8]Forbes .
[9]Membership of New Zealand’s domain registry suddenly triples, which isn't entirely welcome
[10]$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well
[11]New Zealand minister OKs Kim Dotcom extradition to US
[12]New Zealand to world: China attacked us, too!
Colossal has already started work to sequence and rebuild the genomes for all nine moa species, using material gathered during recent expeditions to caves that contain “significant moa subfossil deposits”.
The project aims to resurrect the Moa and other extinct New Zealand species, and prepare potential habitats for them to live in. All involved acknowledge bringing the birds back to life may not be possible, but the project’s other scientific and cultural goals are felt to make the effort worthwhile even if the species isn’t revived. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/04/us_scientists_woolly_mouse_genes/
[2] https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/research/about-uc-research/research-groups-and-centres/ngai-tahu-research-centre
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aG-PN0rjnRwg106sHRl7DQAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aG-PN0rjnRwg106sHRl7DQAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aG-PN0rjnRwg106sHRl7DQAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aG-PN0rjnRwg106sHRl7DQAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/07/10/supplied_nz_giant_moa.jpg
[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2025/07/08/peter-jackson-maoris-colossal-to-de-extinct-worlds-largest-bird/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/01/internetnz_constitution/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/10/nz_health_excel_spreadsheet/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/16/kim_dotcom_us_extradition/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/26/new_zealand_china_attack/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
That's not an extinct bird
That's an extinct dinosaur, and this is step one in Peter Jackson's plan to one up Steven Spielberg by doing Jurassic Park for real!
Re: That's not an extinct bird
We need to stop and do a risk assessment here. It's bad enough with seagulls trying to steal your chips, but one of these big blighters…?!
"using material gathered during recent expeditions"
Well, at least if there is Jurassic Bird Park, this time it will be safe for kids and not full of giant, hungry teeth.
Edible?
And do we know what they ate to grow so big?
Re: Edible?
Highly edible, which is why they went extinct.
I would like to taste one. And a dodo, for that matter. Get to it, Peter!
Re: Edible?
Me too. I am guessing a bit like chicken.
Re: Edible?
Everything tastes like chicken.
Except the chicken. What tastes like fish!
Re: Edible?
Dodo didn't taste that great apparently, but if you were a sailor who had been living on salt beef and salt pork for months any change in diet seemed good.
Not just Moas
Didn't they have a colossal eagle in New Zealand? Not making a Hobbit/LOTR reference here, they really had giant eagles, bring some of them back too!
(Actually, ISTR there were giant penguins not too far from Kiwiland, hence the icon. Bring them back too!)
Re: Not just Moas
Yes, Haast's Eagle
People believe it munched Moa (amongst other things) - hence it being so huge as even young (easier prey) Moa would be quite hefty.
It was massive (for an eagle, probably reached about double the weight of heaviest living eagle) so the comment on no significant predators in the article was technically incorrect (but an eagle generally not what most people regard as a scary predator)
Re: Not just Moas
So, could we then use the eagles as taxis? It seems only reasonable to ask...
If an Australian Emu can Kick your Dunny Down
then one of these giants could kick your whole house down.
I had forgotten how big these blighters were. I remember as a child on a school outing seeing Moa replica in a Dunedin museum which was pretty big but everything is when you are seven years old. I don't think it was even a Giant Moa but one of the second eleven.
"New Zealand is thought to have been the last major landmass to be occupied by humans"
Antarctica. People always forget Antarctica.
"Antarctica. People always forget Antarctica."
Blair's been busy out there all by himself.
Do not despair.
All involved acknowledge bringing the birds back to life may not be possible,
Maybe not at the moment, but the life sciences move at a tremendous rate and future advances may make this scheme possible.
After all, who would have thought a few decades ago that we would be able to map the human genome?
Be bringing the feebles to life next
Isn't Colossal Biosciences the outfit that ...
... implied they had "brought the Dire Wolf back to life", but in fact only edited the genes of the Grey Wolf to make it look like an artist's impression of what a Dire Wolf might have looked like?
I'd be somewhat leery of investing in this kind of thing without doing my due diligence. LOTS of due diligence.
Why am I thinking of Colossal Cave?
I wonder if Jackson will be more like the book or the movie version of John Hammond.