Paul Scofield, a project adviser and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the “Lord of the Rings” director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented.

The director explained that "every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa," a flightless bird similar to an ostrich that went extinct 600 years ago.One does not simply bring back an entire extinct bird species — at least,

Moa returning from extinction by Colossal Biosciences, entrepreneur Ben Lamm, Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson