Question Two
Discuss why the procedures used to ‘sex’ the bones of the Moa were harder than just identifying that they belonged to the same species. In your discussion, say why procedures were needed and why the researchers used DNA from closely related living birds for comparison.
Answer
The species can be identified using the mitochondrial DNA in cells. The karytype of living species of related birds is known and can be used to identify sex of Moa bones were from. Sex chromosome is need to identify the sex of Moa.
However, there are more mitochondria/mitochondrial DNA in cells compared to chromosomes/nuclear/sex chromosome DNA because there is only one of them in a cell. This is the reason why the ‘sex’ of the Moa is harder to identify.