Peter Jackson Funds 12-Foot Moa Resurrection: Jurassic Genes Meet Kiwi Reality
Peter Jackson, wielding 300 moa bones and $15 million, joins Colossal Biosciences to resurrect New Zealand’s extinct 12-foot giant moa, sparking Google’s “Can extinct animals be brought back?” and “What is de-extinction?” fever. Jackson quips, “The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,” as teams extract DNA from centuries-old relics and compare them to emus under Yorkshire Museum’s watchful glass eye.
Unlike mammoth clones, Jackson’s moa quest features legal NZ bone bazaars, Yorkshire Museum displays, and Colossal’s “Jurassic Park in business casual.” Scientists debate, “Should we clone extinct birds?” as CRISPR tech meets flightless fowl ambition. Bird embryology hurdles loom: mammalian IVF won’t work, so imagine a kiwi egg with a dinosaur’s inner monologue. “There’s lots of different scientific hurdles that need to be overcome with any species,” Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro sighs.
Jackson’s private moa bone stash—between 300 and 400 relics—outnumbers most museum collections, making his Wellington office the planet’s unlikeliest prehistoric aviary.
