Haast's eagle hunted moa up to 15 times its own weight.
The largest eagle ever known weighed up to 15 kg; the giant flightless birds up to 230 kg. When humans wiped out the moa, the eagle died out too.
The events
- Extinction of Haast's eaglec. 1445 · South Island, New Zealand. The largest eagle known, with a wingspan up to 3 m, preyed on moa. When the Māori wiped out its prey, it vanished too, estimated around 1445. It may live on in Māori legend as the man-eating bird pouākai.
- Extinction of the moac. 1445 · New Zealand. Giant flightless moa up to 3.6 m tall lived only in New Zealand. Polynesians arrived around 1300, and radiocarbon data suggest that by about 1445 every moa species had been hunted out, as printing was being invented in Europe.
More amazing facts
- 1441 · 1639 Korea's rain gauges are 198 years older than Europe's. King Sejong set up a network of identical gauges in 1441, while Europe's first was made by Benedetto Castelli only in 1639.
- 1446 King Sejong promised that a wise man could learn his alphabet in a morning and a fool in ten days.
- 1446 · 1450 The Korean alphabet and Gutenberg's press are the same age: King Sejong proclaimed Hangul in 1446, and around 1450 Mainz began printing with movable type.
- 1449 · 1457 A Chinese emperor was captured by nomads and later became emperor again.
- 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
- 1450 Machu Picchu and Gutenberg's press are the same age: around 1450 the Incas were building their mountain estate while Mainz printed its first books.