A FRIGHTENING giant claw from an extinct beast has been found mummified with flesh remaining – but it’s not the animal most would expect.
The mysterious animal part was unearthed on Mount Owen in New Zealand and has been extinct for nearly 800 years – making it a breakthrough discovery at the time.
Experts were left baffled after discovering the fossilised remains of a moa bird in 1987.
The ginormous claw was found extremely well-preserved with skin still remaining, putting scientists in a great position to analyse the now-extinct specimen.
This specific beast is now only able to be seen in museums but has no revealed secrets of the bird that no one’s seen for nearly 1000 years.
The moa claw that was found is estimated to be over a shocking 3,300 years old.
But DNA analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that the first beast appeared around a whopping 18.5 million years ago.
There were also at least ten species of moa’s but were made extinct in what was dubbed “the most rapid, human-facilitated megafauna extinction documented to date.”
Sub-species of the bird reached over a terrifying 10ft and was once the largest species of bird on the planet.
