Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown corner of avian genetic history.
The work is the first complete genetic map of the turkey-sized bird whose distant living cousins include the ostrich, emu, and kiwi.
Bush moa were the smallest of the moa species, weighing about 60 pounds and distributed in lowland forests across the north and south islands of New Zealand. Genomic analysis has revealed their closest living relatives aren't kiwis, as was originally speculated, but rather tinamous, a Neotropical bird group from which they diverged genetically about 53 million years ago.
They then assembled the genome, taking each snippet of DNA and mapping it to its correct position. Genome assembly of extinct species is painstaking work that is made more accessible through technologies like high-throughput sequencing. Other species that have been mapped similarly are the passenger pigeon, the woolly mammoth, and our close relative, the Neanderthal.
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