Moa skull with kowhai foliage

Moa ate kōwhai

A little over 700 years ago, humans finally discovered the last habitable place on Earth, Aotearoa-New Zealand (Wilmshurst et al., 2011; Mulrooney et a;, 2011; Bunbury et al., 2022). They found a land where large flightless birds (including the now-extinct moa) abounded, and even the… Read more

ChatGPT Makes Shit Up

An academic asks ChatGPT about New Zealand’s Miocene Manuherikia Group Your narrator dips his toes into this ChatGPT thing With a nod to Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians – ‘I know what I know, if you know what I mean’. One subject where I’m… Read more

Tuataras in Central Otago

Bleached moa bones projected out from the steep bank of the nearly dry gully. This was exciting, as there were clearly several bones, and perhaps an entire skeleton waited to be uncovered. However, the layer of bones was under more than a meter of schist… Read more