11001-40908 South Island flightless goose (Cnemiornis calcitrans) extinct. A sister taxon of Cereopsis (the Cape Barren goose) known from late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits in the eastern South Island. Compared to their 5 kg Cape Barren 'cousins', these giants weighed perhaps 18kgs. They were grassland grazers, and were probably far more common during glacial periods when grasslands would have been widespread. Skull MNZ S35266 from Chatto Creek, Alexandra *
DSC_8784 New Zealand and Australian palaeontologists sieve and wash 19-16 million-year-old (Early Miocene) lake-bed fossils in the Manuherikia River, St Bathans, central Otago *
11001-40705 Greylag goose (Anser anser) gander with his family in a rural wetland. These domesticated geese were first brought to NZ by James Cook and are now feral in many regions of NZ *
