Editing Moa (section)

===Surviving remains===
{{multiple image
|align=left
|perrow=1
|total_width=200

|image1=Dinornis1387.jpg
|caption1=Sir [[Richard Owen]] holding the first discovered moa fossil and standing with a ''Dinornis'' skeleton, 1879

|image2=Natural History Museum, London, moa bone fragment.JPG
|caption2=Owen's first bone fragment (first discovered moa fossil)

}}
[[Joel Samuel Polack|Joel Polack]], a trader who lived on the East Coast of the North Island from 1834 to 1837, recorded in 1838 that he had been shown "several large fossil ossifications" found near Mt&nbsp;Hikurangi. He was certain that these were the bones of a species of emu or ostrich, noting that "the Natives add that in times long past they received the traditions that very large birds had existed, but the scarcity of animal food, as well as the easy method of entrapping them, has caused their extermination". Polack further noted that he had received reports from Māori that a "species of [[Struthio]]" still existed in remote parts of the South Island.<ref>Polack, J.S. (1838)</ref><ref>Hill, H. (1913)</ref>

Dieffenbach<ref>Dieffenbach, E. (1843)</ref> also refers to a fossil from the area near Mt Hikurangi, and surmises that it belongs to "a bird, now extinct, called Moa (or Movie) by the natives". 'Movie' is the first transcribed name for the bird.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://teara.govt.nz/en/8104|title=4. – Moa – Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand|last=Taonga|first=New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu|website=teara.govt.nz|language=en|access-date=4 May 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Moa : the life and death of New Zealand's legendary bird|last=Berentson, Quinn.|date=2012|publisher=Craig Potton|isbn=978-1877517846|location=Nelson, N.Z.|oclc=819110163}}</ref> In 1839, John W. Harris, a [[Poverty Bay]] flax trader who was a natural-history enthusiast, was given a piece of unusual bone by a Māori who had found it in a river bank. He showed the {{convert|15|cm|in|0|abbr=on}} fragment of bone to his uncle, John Rule, a Sydney surgeon, who sent it to [[Richard Owen]], who at that time was working at the Hunterian Museum at the [[Royal College of Surgeons of England|Royal College of Surgeons]] in London.<ref name="Fuller"/>

Owen puzzled over the fragment for almost four years. He established it was part of the [[femur]] of a big animal, but it was uncharacteristically light and honeycombed. Owen announced to a skeptical scientific community and the world that it was from a giant extinct bird like an [[ostrich]], and named it ''Dinornis''. His deduction was ridiculed in some quarters, but was proved correct with the subsequent discoveries of considerable quantities of moa bones throughout the country, sufficient to reconstruct skeletons of the birds.<ref name="Fuller">Fuller, Errol (1987)</ref> In July 2004, the [[Natural History Museum, London|Natural History Museum]] in London placed on display the moa bone fragment Owen had first examined, to celebrate 200 years since his birth, and in memory of Owen as founder of the museum. Since the discovery of the first moa bones in the late 1830s, thousands more have been found. They occur in a range of late [[Quaternary]] and [[Holocene]] [[sedimentary]] deposits, but are most common in three main types of site: [[cave]]s, [[dune]]s, and [[swamp]]s.

Bones are commonly found in caves or ''tomo'' (the Māori word for doline or [[sinkhole]], often used to refer to pitfalls or vertical cave shafts). The two main ways that the moa bones were deposited in such sites were birds that entered the cave to nest or escape bad weather, and subsequently died in the cave and birds that fell into a vertical shaft and were unable to escape. Moa bones (and the bones of other extinct birds) have been found in caves throughout New Zealand, especially in the [[limestone]]/[[marble]] areas of northwest Nelson, [[Karamea]], [[Waitomo]], and [[Te Anau]].

Moa bones and eggshell fragments sometimes occur in active coastal sand dunes, where they may erode from [[paleosol]]s and concentrate in '[[Blowout (geology)|blowouts]]' between dune ridges. Many such moa bones antedate human settlement, although some originate from Māori [[Midden|midden sites]], which frequently occur in dunes near harbours and river mouths (for example the large moa hunter sites at [[Shag River (Otago)|Shag River]], Otago, and [[Wairau Bar]], [[Marlborough Region|Marlborough]]).
{{multiple image
|align=right
|perrow=2
|total_width=500

|image1=Kapua Swamp.jpg
|caption1=An excavation in Kapua Swamp, 1894

|image2=Graveyard 2 a.JPG
|caption2=Palaeontologists working on moa bone deposits in the 'Graveyard', Honeycomb Hill Cave System: This cave is a closed scientific reserve

}}
Densely intermingled moa bones have been encountered in swamps throughout New Zealand. The most well-known example is at [[Pyramid Valley]] in north Canterbury,<ref>Holdaway, Richard & Worthy, Trevor (1997)</ref> where bones from at least 183 individual moa have been excavated, mostly by [[Roger Duff]] of [[Canterbury Museum, Christchurch|Canterbury Museum]].<ref name="DNZB Duff">{{DNZB|Davidson|Janet|5d27|Roger Shepherd Duff}}</ref> Many explanations have been proposed to account for how these deposits formed, ranging from poisonous spring waters to floods and wildfires. However, the currently accepted explanation is that the bones accumulated slowly over thousands of years, from birds that entered the swamps to feed and became trapped in the soft sediment.<ref>Wood, J.R., et al. (2008)</ref>

Many New Zealand and international museums hold moa bone collections. [[Auckland War Memorial Museum]] – Tāmaki Paenga Hira has a significant collection, and in 2018 several moa skeletons were imaged and 3D scanned to make the collections more accessible.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/stories/blog/2018/digitising-moa |title=Digitising moa|accessdate=2 February 2022}}</ref> There is also a major collection in [[Otago Museum]] in [[Dunedin]].