A Rare Find Of A Claw From An Animal That Went Extinct 700 Years Ago Sparked An Online Debate About If 2020 Is The Right Year To Try Cloning It

Sometimes a single fossil can turn into a full-blown internet debate. That is exactly what happened after researchers revisited a strange claw found in New Zealand caves decades ago.

The claw turned out to belong to a moa, a giant bird that disappeared centuries ago, and the discovery brought fresh attention to how these animals lived, and why they vanished. From there, the story quickly moved from paleontology to speculation about cloning and whether science should even go there.

Now the claw is back in the spotlight, and people online have plenty to say about it.

Here is the famous claw:

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It was discovered that this 3,300-year-old enigmatic claw belonged to a moa bird, which vanished from the Earth around 700 to 800 years ago.

The bird in question probably looked like this:

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Moa first appeared around 8.5 million years ago. Scientists claim there were at least ten varieties of moa. The two largest types reached about 12 feet when their necks were stretched, while the smallest type was about the size of a turkey.

This picture shows a comparison between moa species and a human.

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These birds lived in New Zealand.

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Scientists have been trying to determine why these birds became extinct. Moa birds vanished from our planet about 700 years ago, shortly after humans arrived on the islands of New Zealand. Knowing humans, that can’t be a coincidence.

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Trevor Worthy, an evolutionary biologist, says: “The inescapable conclusion is that these birds were not senescent, not in the old age of their lineage and about to exit from the world. Rather, they were robust, healthy populations when humans encountered and terminated them.”

This reminds us of the friend trip standoff, where someone refused to pet sit an aggressive parrot.

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And here is what the internet community has to say about this discovery:

The comments section did not hold back.

People immediately jumped from ancient birds to modern cloning debates.

The internet had plenty of opinions about bringing the moa back.

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