Moa-Nalo - Facts and Figures

Moa-Nalo - Facts and Figures Name: Moa-Nalo (Hawaiian for lost fowl); also known by the genus names Chelychelynechen, Thambetochen and Ptaiochen Habitat: Hawaiian islands Historical Epoch: Pleistocene-Modern (two million-1,000 years ago) Size and Weight: Up to three feet high and 15 pounds Diet: Plants Distinguishing Characteristics: Vestigial wings; stocky legs About the Moa-Nalo About three million years ago, a population of mallard-like ducks managed to reach the Hawaiian islands, smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Once ensconced in this remote, isolated habitat, these lucky pioneers evolved in a very strange direction: flightless, goose-like, stocky-legged birds that fed not on small animals, fish and insects (like most other birds) but exclusively on plants. Collectively known as Moa-Nalo, these birds actually comprised three separate, closely related, and nearly unpronounceable generaChelychelynechen, Thambetochen and Ptaiochen. (We can thank modern science for what we know about the Moa-Nalo: analysis of fossilized coprolites, or petrified poop, has yielded valuable information about these birds diet, and traces of preserved mitochondrial DNA point to their duck ancestry, their most likely modern descendant being the Pacific Black Duck.) Sincelike the distantly related Dodo Bird of the island of Mauritius-the Moa-Nalo had no natural enemies, you can probably guess the reason it went extinct around 1,000 A.D. (See our slideshow of 10 Recently Extinct Birds.) As far as archeologists can tell, the first human settlers arrived on the Hawaiian islands about 1,200 years ago, and found the Moa-Nalo easy pickings (since this bird was unfamiliar with humans, or with any natural predators, it must have possessed a very trusting nature); it didnt help that these human pioneers also brought with them the usual complement of rats and cats, which further decimated the Moa-Nalo population, both by targeting the adults and stealing their eggs. Succumbing to intense ecological disruption, the Moa-Nalo disappeared off the face of the earth about 1,000 years ago, and was unknown to modern naturalists until the discovery of numerous fossils in the early 1980s.