Centuries Ago, New Zealand's Giant Black Swans Were Repealed and Replaced

The all-black swans that glide across New Zealand's wetlands today are only a lame replacement for the bulky beasts that lived there in the past, scientists have discovered. When humans first arrived in New Zealand in the thirteenth century, they found it swimming in black swans. But quickly, it seems, they hunted the birds to extinction. By the time Europeans arrived in the late eighteenth century, the swans were gone. But black swans had lived in Australia all along, and these birds were eventually reintroduced to New Zealand—either intentionally, by humans, or by flying themselves over. Researchers have assumed that the black swans of the past were the same species that lives there today. Their period of extinction was just a blip in their long-term residency of New Zealand, the story went. But analysis by Nicolas Rawlence of the University of Otago and his colleagues uncovered a different tale. The ...