Michael Johnson, a man who lives in South Island, New Zealand has spotted giant footprints of a bird which apparently measured 12 inches long. Johnson saw the bizarre sighting when he was walking along the bank of the Kyeburn River with his pets. After witnessing the strange marks, Johnson soon took the pictures and sent them to the Otago Museum.
After analyzing the photos, experts revealed that the strange marks could have been inflicted on the wet soil by Moa, a giant ostrich-like bird that lived in New Zealand until the 15th century.
"Today we are on the Kyeburn river and we've set up a temporary diversion of the river around the swimming hole and we're currently pumping that swimming hole out as there are a set of moa footprints," Kane Fleury, an assistant curator at the natural science at Otago Museum told TVNZ.
Fleury added that these prints might have been there imprinted in the island for at least a million years. He also lauded Michael Johnson for informing about the footprints to the Otago Museum without any delay.
"It's really awesome that Michael not only noted that he'd seen something special in the water, but he actually came and contacted the right people to do something about it, because this is the only find of its kind in the South Island. It's likely these prints have been there for a million years, maybe a bit longer," added Fleury.
A few days back, a study report published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society had revealed stunning details about a bird that came back to life after going extinct. The bird named Aldabra rail initially went extinct around 1,36,000 years ago, and the new research stated that the bird has re-evolved again. Experts who took part in this study added that this re-evolution of Aldabra rail is a classic example of iterative evolution.
