6. Moas
The Moa was a type of large, flightless bird native to New Zealand. Supposedly, they went extinct some 500 years ago. Then again, New Zealand is a pretty big place. Dinornis Robustus, the biggest species of Moa, could grow to be an enormous 3.6 metres (12 feet) tall. Imagine something akin to a giant, hairy ostrich and youre getting there. Before the arrival of Human beings, Moas were plentiful on the island of New Zealand. Only the massive Haasts eagle (a truly gigantic - and sadly extinct- predatory bird with a wingspan of between 2- 3 metres), hunted the birds. However, once the Maori settled the island, the Moas days were numbered. The Moa provided good hunting and were an excellent food source for the Maori (imagine how much meat you get from a Christmas turkey and extrapolate from that). The most recent evidence suggests that they died out entirely less than a century after the Maori settled the island. Today, the Moa is known from fossil records and bones, as well as skin and flesh samples (particularly a fully-articulated foot found in 1854, a complete, fully feathered leg discovered in 1894 and a desiccated - and thus very well preserved - head uncovered in the 1940s). However, some Maori hunters claimed to have seen them in the 17th century and sightings were being reported throughout the 18th and 19th centuries as well. This has led some cryptozoologists to suggest that the New Zealand Moas survived their initial extinction and continued living in small, isolated communities on the island, where they could still be living today.
Sightings of this (frankly, hard to mistake for anything else) bird continued into the 20th century, with a particularly good one occurring in 1993, where the animal was allegedly seen by three hikers. This sighting is notable because one of the hikers was an SAS survival expert, who also took a picture and documented some of the creatures supposed tracks. Many experts have examined the (predictably blurry) photo, including a group from the University of Canterbury, who confirmed that it was indeed a picture of a large bird. It is worth noting that the bird described in this account was only 1 metre (3 feet) tall, meaning that it was more likely an example of a Lesser Moa (anomalopteryx didformus), which was rendered extinct around the same time as its larger cousins. If the Lesser Moa had survived, it would be a lot easier for it to remain hidden than it would for the other, much bigger, species. As an interesting postscript to the curious tale of the Moa, the creatures genome has now been successfully mapped by scientists, which may mean that, once cloning technology improves, we might yet see the Moa foraging again in the future.