Haast's eagle
| Haast's eagle Temporal range: Late Pleistocene–Holocene |
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| Photo and restoration of skull | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Accipitriformes |
| Family: | Accipitridae |
| Genus: | †Harpagornis or Aquila |
| Species: | †H. moorei |
| Binomial name | |
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Harpagornis moorei Haast, 1872 |
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The Haast's eagle (Harpagornis moorei) is an extinct species of eagle that once lived in the South Island of New Zealand, commonly accepted to be the Pouakai of Maori legend. The species was the largest eagle known to have existed. Its massive size is explained as an evolutionary response to the size of its prey - the flightless moa, the largest of which could weigh 230 kg (510 lb). Haast's eagle became extinct around 1400, after the moa were hunted to extinction by the first Māori.
Haast's eagle was first described by Julius von Haast in 1871 from remains discovered by F. Fuller in a former marsh. Haast named the eagle Harpagornis moorei after George Henry Moore, the owner of the Glenmark Estate, where the bones of the bird had been found. The genus name is from the Greek "harpax", meaning "grappling hook", and "ornis", meaning "bird".
DNA analysis has shown that this raptor is related most closely to the much smaller little eagle as well as the booted eagle and not, as previously thought, to the large wedge-tailed eagle. Thus, Harpagornis moorei may eventually be reclassified as Hieraaetus moorei. H. moorei is estimated to have diverged from these smaller eagles as recently as 1.8 million to 700,000 years ago. If this estimate is correct, its increase in weight by ten to fifteen times is an exceptionally rapid weight increase. This was made possible in part by the presence of large prey and the absence of competition from other large predators.
Haast's eagles were one of the largest known true raptors. In length and weight, Haast's eagle was even larger than the largest living vultures. Another giant eagle from the fossil record, Amplibuteo woodwardi, is more recently and scantly-described but rivaled the Haast's in at least the aspect of total length. Female eagles were significantly larger than males. Most estimates place the female Haast eagles in the range of 10–15 kg (22–33 lb) and males around 9–12 kg (20–26 lb). A comparison to living eagles of the Australasian region resulted in estimated masses in Haast's eagles of 11.5 kg (25 lb) for males and 14 kg (31 lb) for females. One source estimates that the largest females could have scaled more than 16.5 kg (36 lb) in mass. However, even the largest extant eagles, none of which are verified to exceed 9 kg (20 lb) in a wild state, are about forty percent smaller in body size than Haast's eagles.
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