Filmmaker Peter Jackson, best known for his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa.
His fascination with the extinct animal has led to a partnership with the Dallas-based genetics company Colossal Biosciences that will attempt to engineer living birds to resemble the extinct animal.
Jackson told the Associated Press, "The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do. Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa."
The extinct South Island giant moa, which once stood 12 feet tall, might be impossible to completely revive, but scientists say it may be "feasible" to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits.
The collaboration, which also includes the New Zealand-based Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, received $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh.
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