New Zealand Birds

11001-45811 Haast's eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) skull of female. This extinct eagle was thought to have evolved from a very small ancestor in less than a million years. It was a fifteen-fold increase in size, and a record breaking example of island gigantism. Widespread in the South Island in the Pleistocene, its range contracted so that in the Holocene it only occurred in mountainous areas, and east of the Southern Alps *

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11001-45811 Haast's eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) skull of female. This extinct eagle was thought to have evolved from a very small ancestor in less than a million years. It was a fifteen-fold increase in size, and a record breaking example of island gigantism. Widespread in the South Island in the Pleistocene, its range contracted so that in the Holocene it only occurred in mountainous areas, and east of the Southern Alps *

Haasts eagle 45811 Hieraaetus Harpagornis Aquila moorei extinct skull giant