Moa

The Moa was a real giant flightless bird native to New Zealand, with some species standing up to 12 feet tall before their extinction roughly 500–600 years ago. Yet sporadic reports from remote South Island forests describe enormous bird-like footprints or glimpses of shaggy shapes moving among trees, suggesting to some that small populations might have survived. Māori oral traditions occasionally speak of large birds long after their presumed disappearance, lending a faint historical echo to these tales. Most scientists firmly dismiss modern sightings, attributing them to misidentified emus (accidentally released in past decades) or large ostriches on farms. Still, the Moa as a cryptid embodies the tantalizing possibility that not all giants of prehistory have entirely vanished from Earth’s hidden corners.