Paul Scofield: Canterbury Museum Senior Natural History Curator on the shocking insights about New Zealand's native fauna

There's new insights into New Zealand's ancient fauna from a 20-year dig.

An international team of palaeontologists researching the St Bathans fossil site in Central Otago have concluded kakapo, small wrens, bats and freshwater limpets arrived well before other well known species - like kiwi and moa.

Canterbury Museum Senior Natural History Curator Paul Scofield says they also uncovered signs of other surprising animals living here.

"We had two species of crocodile - and we believe that they most likely became extinct at the beginning of the ice age about two or three years ago."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hever dupis Ellen nineteen past five. Now this may shock
a few. Apparently the Kiwi and the Tarker hair and
the moor are not actually Kiwi birds. They are Australian birds.
A team of paleontologists have been excavating a fossil site
in central Otago since two thousand and one. Of this
is their latest discovery, and Canterbury Museum Seen You Curative
Natural History Paul Scofield was involved in the excavation with us. Now, hey,

(00:23):
Paul Beday, how's it going good? Thank you? How long
ago did these birds come to New Zealand?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Then, well, it differs for different species that we believe
them are in. The Kiwi probably got here about thirty
million years ago, but some of the others, like Tarka
were probably quite recent blow ins, maybe only two or
three million years ago. So, as you well know, there's
this east westerly drift from Australia and right across the

(00:54):
Southern Ocean, and it appears that the species have been
arriving in New Zealand ever since we drifted away from
Gondwana land. So the really surprising thing from our point
of view is the fact that that many of the
species that we considered to be sort of traditional kiwis.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Are you there, Paul, Have we lost you? Oh no,
we've got you. Sorry, your line's cutting in out a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
If no, that's not your fault. Don't you worry about it.
If if, if these birds are actually originally deporties from Australia,
then should the car cup or actually be our national bird?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well it's it's got a lot of the same characteristics
as the kiwi. It's nocturnal and it's also flightless. And
the carp really is from from both the DNA and
the fossil record. We know that it's been here for
so so long, and it's really quite unique. And but
there's other really interesting birds similarly. There's the the little wrens,

(02:02):
the riflemen, and the bush and the bush wren and
the rock creant, and that they are also long term
New Zealand residents. I've been here for sixty million years.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, Hey, what happened to the crocs that we used
to have?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah? Yeah, So there's another really exciting thing. We had
two species of crocodile and we believe that they most
likely became extinct at the beginning of the ice ages
about two million years ago to or three million years ago,
so central Otigo. When at the time we were digging
twenty million years ago, it was really quite warm. It
was like North North and New South Wales or southern Queensland.

(02:39):
But as soon as the glaciations came along, things really
cooled down and got to the point where the crocodile
simply couldn't survive.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I see Paul, thank you for running us. We'd appreciated
Doctor Paul Schofield, Senior Curator of Natural History at Canterbury Museum.
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