The South Island kōkako is an elusive forest bird, famed for its haunting call. Despite numerous reported sightings over the past 50 years, no definitive evidence to prove its survival – such as a specimen, photograph, or droppings – has been found since 1937. In 1986, a feather discovered onRead more
Curators Rodrigo Salvador and Alan Tennyson, working with colleagues from GNS Science and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), used chemical analysis on the sub-fossil bones of this extinct duck to determine how it lived. Here they describe what they found.Read more
While rummaging through cabinets, Curator Invertebrates Rodrigo Salvador found a two-centimetre treasure: the shell of an extinct snail from Saint Helena. Here he talks about the ecology of Saint Helena and how the snail ended up in a museum in New Zealand.Read more
New Zealand has a new species of seabird. Te Papa scientists recently described Imber’s petrel (Pterodroma imberi) from the Chatham Islands as a new species. A previous study that measured a large number of seabird bones from the Chatham Islands found three size categories. The largest bones belong toRead more
