Diet: This slow-moving bird was an herbivore; it ate seeds and fruit. These birds swallowed stones (which went into gizzard) that helped digest the food.

When Dinornis Lived: Dinornis appeared during the Pleistocene and went extinct around 1800, due to pressures from humans.

Dinornis was named by English paleontologist Richard Owen in 1843; Owen had been sent a box of bones from a missionary in New Zealand.

Classification: Kingdom Animalia (animals), phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata (vertebrates), class Aves (birds), order Dinornithiformes, family Dinornithidae, genus Dinornis, species maximus.