Harpagornis moorei
Haast's eagle, sometimes known as Fuller's eagle, is an extinct species of eagle that lived in the South Island of New Zealand, commonly accepted to be the pouākai of Māori mythology. It is the largest eagle known to have existed, with an estimated weight of 10–18 kilograms, compared to the next-largest and extant harpy eagle and Steller's sea eagle at up to 9 kg (20 lb). Its massive size is explained as an evolutionary response to the size of its primary prey—the flightless moa—the largest of which could weigh 200 kg (440 lb). Haast's eagle became extinct around 1445, following the arrival of the Māori, who hunted moa to extinction, introduced the Polynesian rat, and destroyed large tracts of forest by fire.
GordonMakryllos · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Haast's eaglePBDB
- Sits inside
- HarpagornisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Length
- 2.6 mWikidata
- Mass
- 15 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Harpagornis moorei on record, most of them in the Holocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
7 occurrences- Pleistocene14%
- Holocene86%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Harpagornis moorei has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Harpagornis moorei and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Harpagornis moorei and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
131 taxa- Apteryx australis7 sites
- Gallirallus australis7 sites
- Anas chlorotis6 sites
- Corvus moriorum6 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae6 sites
- Emeus crassus6 sites
- Fulica prisca6 sites
- Nestor meridionalis6 sites
- Pachyornis elephantopus6 sites
- Callaeas cinereus5 sites
- Chenonetta finschi5 sites
- Circus eylesi5 sites
- Dinornis giganteus5 sites
- Euryapteryx geranoides5 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae5 sites
- Strigops habroptila5 sites
- Turnagra capensis5 sites
- Anas superciliosa4 sites
- Ardenna grisea4 sites
- Cnemiornis calcitrans4 sites
- Cyanoramphus4 sites
- Cygnus sumnerensis4 sites
- Eudyptes pachyrhynchus4 sites
- Eudyptula minor4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Harpagornis moorei, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand3
- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand3
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand1
Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Harpagornis moorei
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- GordonMakryllos
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Harpagornis moorei was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHarpagornis through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Haast 1872