Broad-billed moa
| Broad-billed moa Temporal range: Pleistocene-Holocene
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|---|---|
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| Restoration | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Infraclass: | Palaeognathae |
| Order: | †Dinornithiformes |
| Family: | †Emeidae |
| Genus: | †Euryapteryx Haast, 1874 |
| Species: | †E. curtus
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| Binomial name | |
| Euryapteryx curtus | |
| Synonyms | |
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List
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The broad-billed moa or coastal moa (Euryapteryx curtus) was an extinct moa from New Zealand. It lived in the North and the South Islands and on Stewart Island.
The coastal moa mainly lived in dry shrubland areas. It was lived almost all over North Island. The dominant species lived in the center, the volcanic plateau and along the Wanganui-Taranaki Coast.
The birds were fat and short-legged. Males were about a meter tall. Females were a little bit taller (1.3 meters). They varied in size, some were even twice as big as others. They weighed about 20 kg. It is thought that they mainly ate fruit, leaves and large insects. Chicks ate insects.
It is thought that because coastal moas (among others) had a small olfactory chamber, they had great vocal abilities.
References[change | change source]
- ↑ Owen 1846
- ↑ Checklist Committee Ornithological Society of New Zealand (2010). "Checklist-of-Birds of New Zealand, Norfolk and Macquarie Islands and the Ross Dependency Antarctica" (PDF). Te Papa Press. Retrieved 4 January 2016.