‘Old Mother Goose’ adds to history of Aotearoa NZ birds

‘Old Mother Goose’ adds to history of NZ birds, University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, March 2026

The discovery of a rare fossil goose in an ancient Central Otago lake shows the evolutionary history of Aotearoa New Zealand birds is much more dynamic than once thought, a University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka researcher says.

Associate Professor Nic Rawlence, Director of the Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory, is co-author of a new paper which analyses the fossil and its origins.

Published in the journal Historical Biology, the paper is an international collaboration between Otago, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the University of Cambridge (UK) analysing fossils uncovered around St Bathans.

Associate Professor Rawlence says while many waterfowl species are incredibly common in the fossil deposits in the area, some are quite rare.

The researchers re-examined the remains of all bones previously identified as belonging to geese and compared them to the other waterfowl bones from the deposit and a broad collection of comparative bird skeletons.

“We determined that the bones included an undescribed species, the size of a small goose,” he says.