A FRIGHTENING giant claw from an extinct beast has been found mummified with flesh remaining – but it’s not the animal most would expect.
The mysterious animal part was unearthed on Mount Owen in New Zealand and has been extinct for nearly 800 years – making it a breakthrough discovery at the time.
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Experts were left baffled after discovering the fossilised remains of a moa bird in 1987.
The ginormous claw was found extremely well-preserved with skin still remaining, putting scientists in a great position to analyse the now-extinct specimen.
This specific beast is now only able to be seen in museums but has no revealed secrets of the bird that no one’s seen for nearly 1000 years.
The moa claw that was found is estimated to be over a shocking 3,300 years old.
But DNA analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that the first beast appeared around a whopping 18.5 million years ago.
There were also at least ten species of moa’s but were made extinct in what was dubbed “the most rapid, human-facilitated megafauna extinction documented to date.”
Sub-species of the bird reached over a terrifying 10ft and was once the largest species of bird on the planet.
When Polynesians first migrated to New Zealand in the midst of the 13th century, the beasts population was reportedly huge.
But from human’s over-hunting and destructing the beasts habitat, the moa was soon tragically made extinct.
The Natural History Museum said about the moa’s extinction: “As they reached maturity so slowly, [they] would not have been able to reproduce quickly enough to maintain their populations, leaving them vulnerable to extinction.
“All moas were extinct by the time Europeans arrived in New Zealand in the 1760s.”
Since the moa claw was found, there have been talks among experts of a potential revival of the bird beast – bizarrely through cloning.
As there are so many well-preserved remains being stored, DNA could be extracted and used to recreate the 10ft bird.
And the beast would not struggle to flourish in the modern natural environment as many of the plants that moa’s fed off of are still around today, Ancient Origins reports.
It comes after scientists conducted an autopsy of an ancient wolf that was found frozen solid after 44,000 years with its last meal still in its stomach.
The snarling Ice Age beast was perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost and could unearth prehistoric super-viruses.
Scientists aim to detect and study ancient viruses and microbiota as well as the animal’s diet as its last meal still sits in its stomach.
Since the stomach bacteria has remained frozen and untouched for thousands of years it now has the potential to unleash new disease.
Samples of the mummified creature were also taken to compare it with modern day predators.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
It is the oldest known wolf to undergo such an autopsy.
Locals made the terrifying discovery in 2021 at a dept of roughly 130ft in Russia‘s coldest region, Yakutia.
What is a moa and when did it go extinct?
MOA’S are an extinct group of flightless birds that originated from New Zealand.
They have been described as being similar to ostriches – but their sizes varied.
Before extinction, moa’s could compared to a medium sized bird, like a turkey.
But they also had the potential to grow to 10ft tall and weigh as much as 250kg.
The first kind of the beast reportedly appeared around a whopping 18.5 million years ago.
There were also at least ten species of moa’s but were made extinct in what was dubbed “the most rapid, human-facilitated megafauna extinction documented to date.”
Sub-species of the bird reached over a terrifying 10ft and was once the largest species of bird on the planet.
When Polynesians first migrated to New Zealand in the midst of the 13th century, the beasts population was reportedly huge – sitting at around 58,000.
But from human’s over-hunting and destructing the beasts habitat, the moa was soon tragically made extinct.
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