It's 12ft tall, feathery and been extinct for 600 years: can the giant moa live again?

Standing at around three and a half metres (12ft) high, the giant moa is the tallest bird known to have walked on Earth.

- Patrick Greenfield

For thousands of years, the wingless herbivore patrolled New Zealand, feasting on trees and shrubs, until the arrival of humans.

This week, the US start-up Colossal Biosciences announced that the giant moa has joined the woolly mammoth, dodo and thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, on its list of animals that it is trying to bring back from the dead.

The announcement has provoked excitement and deep scepticism from many experts about whether it is possible to resurrect the bird, which disappeared about 600 years ago, a century after the arrival of early Polynesian settlers in New Zealand.

The Texas company said it is aiming to resurrect the extinct bird within five to 10 years, in partnership with the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre at New Zealand's University of Canterbury.

Reportedly backed by US$15m (£11m) of funding from the Lord of the Rings film-maker Sir Peter Jackson, who is an investor in Colossal Biosciences and an avid moa bone collector, the project will try to "de-extinct" the giant bird by harvesting DNA from fossils, then editing genes of its nearest surviving relatives, such as the emu. The genetically modified birds would be hatched and released into enclosed "rewilding sites", the company said.