A team of contractors has unwittingly unearthed dozens of moa bones in south Canterbury.
The local museum says the collection offers a chance to find out more about the world's tallest known bird species.
Almost 40 moa bones and fragments were found by an unsuspecting contractor.
"The bones were found on Wednesday by a contract team working for Alpine Energy. They were digging a trench to install a post, and once they dug the trench out they found bones," says South Canterbury Museum director Philip Howe.
Most of the bones are believed to belong to a female South Island giant moa. There is also at least one bone from a much smaller male.
"It's likely that this moa, or a number of moa, blundered into a forest swap, became mired in the mud, couldn't get out, and eventually perished," says Mr Howe.
In its heyday, the moa would have stood about three metres tall.
"[They were] huge things crashing through the forest. The females could weigh well in excess of 200 kilograms," says Mr Howe.
The remains of five different moa species have previously been found in south Canterbury, but discoveries are becoming less common.
Without expensive carbon dating, it's almost impossible to know how old the bones are.
But Mr Howe says the importance of the find should not be underestimated.
"These days there is a wide array of scientific techniques in the laboratory which can tell us so much more about moas. That's why samples like this will be important in the future."
The bones will be kept at South Canterbury Museum in Timaru, but the exact location they were found is being kept secret to discourage amateur anthropologists going looking for their own moa bones.
Newshub.
