Note - this is a crosspost from my new blog on Patreon. Please follow me over there! https://www.patreon.com/avianage
Avian Age is undergoing steady development, with a prototype featuring the Upland Moa picking up a nomination for Excellence in Representation at the NZ Games Fest this year! You can play it here: verteks.itch.io/avian-age
01: Land Bridges and Flying Kākāpō
DISCLAIMER: The claim that the described Kākāpō relative may have been able to fly is an extrapolation made in a Canterbury University press release, that is not present in the content of the referenced paper! While it may be plausible, I don't want to misrepresent the literature. https://www.canterburymuseum.com/explore/latest-news/a-lost-world-unearthed-ancient-cave-reveals-million-year-old-k%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D-ancestor
The specific focus of this post is the recent find of 1-to-1.5 million-year-old fossils, in a cave in Waitomo. It reveals that as well as the huge interchange of species between islands during this time period, there was also a process of natural extinction normally unseen in an island ecosystem. (Worthy et al. 2026) This challenges my limits for science communication.
I’ll slow down and step back here, because there’s already a lot of exciting factors siting in this paper’s premise that will come to shape the narrative beats of Avian Age.
CONTEXT: The Early Pleistocene, 2MA to 1MA.
Tectonic activity has hoisted the landmass of Aotearoa out of the ocean, with the ongoing uplift of the Southern Alps entering an accelerated rise. The climate alternated between glacial and interglacial periods frequently, and the sea dropped from ~50 to up to 120 metres below its present level.
The North and South Islands were connected by continuous stretches of land, which shifted in shape and habitability from the Western, long, narrow stretch around the Wanganui Basin to the Eastward, shorter stretch of deep waters that we now know as the Cook Strait.
This “land bridge” is the entire reason the Moa was able to speciate into the North Island, as the Zealandia continent was almost entirely submerged 25 to 23 Million years ago. The palaeognath ancestor of the moa flew to New Zealand from South America between 30 and 60 MYA.
The 2MA to 0.5MA bridge is the period where the Kākā and Kea parted evolutionary ways, with the Kea arising from ecological pressure in the especially cold Southern alpine environments, and the north island and south island Kākā finding their own differences in their respective niches.
The early Pleistocene is the period where the ancient NZ palaeognath, the Moa, was finishing its speciation into the forms we know now. Simultaneously, it is the time where the Australian little eagle found its way here, and evolved to its massive proportions in an incredibly short timespan; in order to seize on the opportunity to become the apex predator of this mostly herbivorous, defenseless fauna ecology.
This eagle, which claimed its title as the most massive bird of prey between 1 million and 700,000 years ago, is the Pouākai/Haast’s Eagle -- or, Fuller’s Eagle, as (Holdaway, 2025) suggests, to pay better homage to the scientist who made the excavation and initial identification of the bones as belonging to a giant bird of prey.
If the Moa is our hero, Pouākai is the key “antagonist” – but it is also a part of what made the native ecosystem thrive.
The kiwi is also a paleognath with has an ancient lineage in New Zealand, but its speciation into the five species we know now is recent, and its development of a forebrain structure for foraging by scent is entirely unique in the proto-bird order it belongs to. (Corfield et al. 2008)
The only kiwi record we have from the 2-1 MA period and prior to the 17-19 million-year-old St. Bathans speciemens (which reveal the link to the kiwi’s flight-capable ancestor) is the Marton Kiwi, Apteryx littoralis (Tennyson, Tomotani 2021) – a species similar to the Okarito and North Island Brown Kiwi, that lived 1 million years ago but is non-existent today.
All of this niche-finding and interplay remained limited to coastal regions when it came to the North Island for most of this time, as the land was rocked by the immense destructive movements of the Taupo Volcanic Zone -- most notably the Ngaroma 1.5MYA and Kidnappers 1 MYA supervolcano eruptions -- the latter of which capped off the period I'll be covering.
Between the layers of ash and tephra that cloaked the landscape and provided time-coded layers of one and one and a half million years in its stone, (Worthy et al. 2026) discovered the bones of a Kākāpō ancestor which, in contrast to the giant, proto-Strigopoidea (Kākāpō, Kākā, Kea) parrot which had huge, stout leg bones and was flightless, this species had leg bones unsuitable for climbing in the same way, while being otherwise similar in form to the Kākāpō. (Worthy et al. 2026). It is not out of the realm of possibility for this extinct Kākāpō relative to have been capable of flight.
This reveals that extreme climate events such as glaciation and volcanic activity was likely a cause of species we have no present record of, becoming extinct.
This clouds our view of what the exact picture was of the plethora of fauna living during this relatively recent, dynamic epoch, but it also clears the way for discovery of species that were lost to time that are familiar, yet unlike the birds we now know.
For these reasons: Ground context of the evolutionary co-origin of the moa and Pouākai, extended, relatively habitable land bridge, relative resolution of the different species of each bird, and anchor points of the ancient Alps to the South and Volcanic dynamism in the North, and the prospect of more finds that shed light on now-extinct species – species made entirely extinct by natural processes, not just in certain regions, I am shifting the timeframe of Avian Age’s story to this deeply fascinating period.
There will be context given at the start for ecological keystones; the ghosts of Gondwana, the Oligocene Drowning, the beginning of the uplift of the Alps and abundant St Bathans fauna that followed, what we know of the origins of key species.
There is also plenty to work with in regards to the time that followed, before these species found their final pre-human niches. This is where I set the “Mauri” prototype, which focuses on the Upland Moa’s seasonal Alpine migrations. As glacial oscillation became more frequent in the late Pleistocene, certain, scant opportunities arose for inter-island crossing, and the Taupo Volcanic Zone once again devastated vast regions and pushed species into refugia. More on this to come.
So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this sort of breakneck journey through what is only really a slice of the natural history of New Zealand.
Let’s translate this into the elements that I want to build into Avian Age:
- Terrain modelling of the land bridge region, between the Alps of the upper South Island and volcanic regions of the Lower North Island.
This is an anchor point that will dictate where levels are set and the journey the campaign takes.
- Representation of the evolution of the Moa, and the Eagle as it moves from only being capable of preying on smaller moa and birds to the giant Dinornis.
This provides a progression not only to more difficult levels with more natural predation, but more specific ecology information.
- Extinctions happening not just as species are out-competed and driven out of certain pockets of habitat, but entirely wiped from the evolutionary record, and what it may have taken for the remaining species to survive.
This is another huge tool to work with in creating game mechanics and win/ performance conditions, as well as unavoidable outcomes, for each level.
Please, let me know if you want me to dive deep in a certain direction! Right now, we are focusing on the Moa, Eagle, Kākāpō, Kākā, Kea and Kiwi in structuring the next playtests.
And get in touch if you want to talk about the content here! Especially if there’s anything I’ve got wrong. I want this game to be the best educational resource possible.
Archer, M., Hand, S. J., Long, J., & Worthy, T. H. (2023). Prehistoric Australasia: Visions of evolution and extinction. CSIRO Publishing.
Bunce, M., Worthy, T. H., Phillips, M. J., Holdaway, R. N., Willerslev, E., Haile, J., ... & Cooper, A. (2009). The evolutionary history of the extinct ratite moa and New Zealand Neogene paleogeography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(49), 20646-20651.
Corfield, J. R., Wild, J. M., Hauber, M. E., Parsons, S., & Kubke, M. F. (2008). Evolution of brain size in the Palaeognath lineage, with an emphasis on New Zealand ratites. Brain Behavior And Evolution, 71(2), 87-99.
Holdaway, R. N. (2025). The genus name for the extinct New Zealand Eagle (Accipitridae) and a suggested replacement for an inappropriate vernacular name. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 145(4), 406-410.
Tennyson, A. J. D., & Tomotani, B. M. (2022). A new fossil species of kiwi (Aves: Apterygidae) from the mid-Pleistocene of New Zealand. Historical Biology, 34(2), 352-360.
Worthy, T. H., Scofield, R. P., Suresh, S., Barker, S. J., Wilson, C. J., Williams, P. W., & Baker, J. A. (2026). The first Early Pleistocene (ca 1 Ma) fossil terrestrial vertebrate fauna from a cave in New Zealand reveals substantial avifaunal turnover in the last million years. Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, 1-40.
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