Two people are standing in a carved out ditch that surrounds a piece of earth they are digging carefully on.

Welcome to a blog series that introduces places, people, methods, and species that are important to palaeontological research at Te Papa and beyond. Curators Felix Marx and Alan Tennyson, along with researchers William Baker and Collection Manager Hazel Richards, start us off with a summary of what palaeontology is and how it works…Read more

Alan Cooper holds a giant elephant bird leg bone in front of a kiwi skeleton for media as Alan Tennyson looks on. Photo: Jean-Claude Stahl © Te Papa

A study published in the journal Science today reveals a new and unexpected origin for New Zealand’s iconic kiwi and overturns the previous idea that the ancestors of kiwi flew directly over from Australia (see Miocene fossils show that Kiwi are probably not phyletic dwarves, Paleornithological Research 2013, and St Bathan’sRead more