Dr Ruth Freeman

They've been extinct for about 600 years.

They were native to New Zealand.

Think of a massive emu, like very, very tall.

They could be about three metres tall.

But the reason that moas are in the news is because our favourite de-extinction company, Colossal Biosciences, says that it has developed an artificial egg which it could potentially use to bring back to life the moa or indeed the dodo.

Wow.

So people may have heard of colossal biosciences before.

They were in the news last year claiming to have de-extincted the dire wolf.

And they didn't really do that.

You know, they modified a modern grey wolf to make it have some features that look a little bit more like what we think a dire wolf looks like.

And I think here we're in danger of more hype than substance as well.

So this wasn't published.

It was a press release.

So probably warning signs go up there straight away.

But it has been really widely covered.

So what they did was they've actually hatched 26 chickens out of an artificial egg.

So, I mean, they call it an egg, but it's not really an egg.

It's more of an egg shell.

So it's kind of a sort of.

a silicone membrane, which is permeable.