Fossilized bones of two new species of tiny, flightless extinct birds have been discovered by Australasian scientists in 19 to 16-million-year-old sediments of an ancient lake on the South Island of New Zealand.

A tiny extinct rail (30-40g) is overshadowed by a regular duck  [Credit: Gavin Mouldey]

The two miniscule species—one barely larger than a sparrow—were members of the rail family, a group of birds common today in wetlands that includes swamphens, moorhens, coots and crakes. Their remains were unearthed near the town of St Bathans in Central Otago.

Many rail species can fly well and have dispersed to far-flung oceanic islands. However, flightlessness has evolved more times in this group of birds that in any other, especially on predator-free islands. The world's largest rails evolved in New Zealand, notably the flightless takahe and weka.

The study, led by scientists from Flinders University with colleagues from UNSW, Canterbury Museum and the Museum of New Zealand, is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Team member UNSW Professor Mike Archer, says: "This new discovery emphasizes the fact that New Zealand has long been one of the world's most extraordinary engines driving bird evolution.

"Charting how lineages like these rails have changed through time on an island that has been geographically isolated for more than 80 million years will test basic presumptions made about bird evolution in general," says Professor Archer of the of the PANGEA Research Centre in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Nineteen to 16 million years ago, a 5600 square kilometre megalake dominated the landscape of New Zealand's South Island. It was surrounded by a subtropical rainforest and plants typical of Australia and long lost from New Zealand, such as eucalypts, casuarinas, palms and cycads, were common there.

"Flightlessness in birds is often associated with an increase in size," says Ellen Mather, study lead author and Ph.D. student at Flinders University. "The weka, which is in the same family as our fossil birds and lives in New Zealand today, is about the size of a chicken. The Banded Rail, their closest flying relative, is about half that size."

The most common of the new fossil rails has been named Priscaweka parvales, meaning ancient weka with small wings. It was a mere one twentieth of the weight of a weka and was similar in size to the recently extinct Chatham rail Cabalus modestus.

Small flightless birds only exist in the absence of terrestrial mammalian predators, and New Zealand has long been recognised as the iconic example of a country with an avifauna which evolved in the absence of such predators.

When humans discovered New Zealand, the main islands had many flightless birds including giants within the nine species of moa, several kiwi, two huge geese, two adzebills, even some tiny wrens, and at least five flightless rails.

Team member, Dr. Paul Scofield, a Senior Curator at the Natural History at Canterbury Museum, says: "The new St Bathans' rails join a host of other fossil birds recovered from these deposits that show New Zealand has long been a land of birds. The discovery of these two miniscule flightless rails raises the question of 'Where did they come from?'"

The researchers suggest they had ancestors in Australia which flew across the 1500 km ocean to New Zealand in previous millennia. However, the new species are unlike any rail known elsewhere, so their exact origin or closest relatives remain a mystery.

Other than hints of large flightless moa ancestors, these rails are the first flightless birds to be described from this fauna. This is unexpected as the St Bathans Fauna contains small terrestrial mammals, which normally preclude evolution of small flightless species. The tiny flightless rails therefore strongly suggest that the mysterious mammals were not predators of small birds. Flightless birds have been a feature of the New Zealand avifauna for millions of years, much longer than previously thought. They are probably the oldest flightless rails known globally.

"The ongoing research into the fossil birds of New Zealand builds on that begun over 150 years ago. It continues to throw up revelations into the timing and origins of major groups of birds that characterize modern avifaunas" says Associate Professor Trevor Worthy of Flinders University.

Source: University of New South Wales [February 28, 2018]

While the giant birds that once dominated New Zealand are all extinct, a study of their preserved dung (coprolites) has revealed many aspects of their ancient ecosystem, with important insights for ongoing conservation efforts.

Moa skull [Credit: FunkMonk/WikiCommons]

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) and Landcare Research NZ, reconstructed the prehuman New Zealand ecosystem using coprolites ranging from 120 to 1500 years old.

The ancient dried dung originated from four species of extinct giant moa and the critically endangered kakapo parrot, and contained genetic records of diet, pathogens, and the behavior of the birds. Such detailed pictures of the pre-historic ecosystem are critical for present-day ecological restoration efforts, but are not available from the conventional fossil record of preserved skeletons.

The ancient dung samples were excavated from caves and rockshelters across New Zealand by Dr Jamie Wood, of Landcare Research. He says, "Coprolites were actually more common than we'd thought, once we started looking for them. And it turns out they contain a huge range of important information about past ecosystems."

Lead author Alex Boast, a PhD student at Landcare Research says, "A key finding was that the giant birds were eating a wide range of mushrooms and fungi, including species that are critical for the beech forests that are widespread across New Zealand. The brightly colored mushrooms remain distinctive parts of these forests today, but it appears they were meant to be eaten and then distributed by the moa.

"Worryingly, introduced mammals which consume these mushrooms don't appear to produce fertile spores, so this critical ecosystem function of the giant birds has been lost -- with serious implications for the long-term health of New Zealand's beech forests."

The research was performed at ACAD where Postdoctoral Research Associate and microbiome specialist, Dr Laura Weyrich, says, "Moa coprolites contained a surprising diversity of parasites, many completely new to science. Several parasites appear to be specialized to single moa species, so that a range of parasites became extinct with each moa species. As a result, we have probably underestimated the loss of biodiversity associated with the extinction of the megafauna."

ACAD Director, Professor Alan Cooper, who led the study, says, "The wide diversity of DNA we retrieved from the dung has allowed us to reconstruct many aspects of the behavior and interactions of species that we've never been able to see before. This important new method allows us to see how prehuman ecosystems have been altered, which is often hard to identify, and to guide our efforts in correcting some of the resulting damage."

Source: University of Adelaide [February 12, 2018]

The discovery of fossil insects, nematodes and fungi preserved in amber from sites in Otago is shedding new light on New Zealand's geological and biological history.

An image of a insect fossilized in amber [Credit: University of Otago]

University of Otago paleontologists Associate Professor Daphne Lee and Dr. Uwe Kaulfuss, with Professor Alexander Schmidt of the University of Göttingen, co-led a team of international scientists in collecting and analyzing amber deposits from more than 30 sites throughout New Zealand.

The small and fragile fossils are 25 to 15 million years old and include a number of spiders (including web remains with prey), tiny carnivores such as pseudoscorpions, diverse soil-dwelling mites, detritivores such as springtails, biting and gall midges, fungus gnats and chironomids, scale insects, parasitoid wasps, ants, beetles, and bark lice.

"Some of the arthropods and fungi represent the first fossil records of their groups from the entire Southern Hemisphere," Associate Professor Lee explains.

Hundreds of kilograms of amber were extracted from lignite deposits, largely near Roxburgh, Hyde and Pomahaka, in Otago. Preparation of the commonly opaque, and often brittle and/or fractured amber to expose inclusions for study is challenging. However, new techniques developed in Professor Schmidt's laboratory in Germany revealed numerous fossils with 3-D preservation.

The amber derives from the ancestors of the kauri, resin-producing conifers belonging to the Araucariaceae family which still live today in northern New Zealand.

"This means that the source of the resin has remained unchanged for at least the past 25 million years. The amber fossils help in understanding the evolution of these long-lasting forest ecosystems on a geologic time scale," Associate Professor Lee adds.

Amber, fossilized tree resin, preserves life forms, providing access to delicate organisms that are otherwise rare or absent from the fossil record.

Amber deposits are concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere where their inclusions have been studied intensively. Until now, the scarcity of major deposits from the Southern Hemisphere has severely hampered understanding of the global evolutionary history of terrestrial invertebrate and fungal biotas.

Dr. Kaulfuss says the fossils are significant because of what they tell us about the country's ecological history, as a long-isolated former Gondwanan landmass.

"These fossils are really important for us because they provide a very rare opportunity to look back on what made up New Zealand's forest and ecosystem 25 million-years-ago.

"We now know what kind of animals and plants were around at that time and what has gone extinct since then.''

The findings are published in Gondwana Research.

Source: University of Otago [February 08, 2018]

Biologists have known for a long time that animals living in colder climates tend to have larger bodies, supposedly as an adaptation to reduce heat loss. However, understanding how temperature affects animals has gained new importance thanks to climate change. A new study from The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses European House Sparrows, which have spread into a variety of climates in Australia and New Zealand since their introduction in the mid-19th century, to show that this trend in birds might actually be due to the effects of high temperatures during development--raising new alarms about how populations might be affected by global warming.

The size of European House Sparrows in Australia and New Zealand may be influenced by high temperatures during development [Credit: P. Deviche]

Macquarie University's Samuel Andrew and his colleagues captured and measured approximately 40 adult House Sparrows at each of 30 locations across Australia and New Zealand. They found that maximum temperatures during the summer, when the birds breed, were a better predictor of adult body size at each location than winter minimum temperatures. This adds support to the idea that excessive heat during development may affect birds' growth throughout their lives, raising concerns that increasing summer temperatures due to climate change could drive down the average adult body size, with potential effects on the birds' fitness.

"If variation in body size is linked directly or indirectly to adapting to different climates, then body size could be useful for monitoring the extent to which bird populations are capable of adapting rapidly to changing climates," says Andrew. "Our work on this common species helps us to understand the adaptive responses of birds to a changing climate and their constraints, and this fundamental knowledge will help future workers and managers focus their work on other species and potentially identify those species most at risk from climate change."

"This paper is an important addition to a growing body of work that is changing our understanding of the relationships between climate and body size. The big question generated by these results is the extent to which the observed relationship is the outcome of adaptive evolutionary differences among sites as opposed to direct developmental responses to different temperatures. Interestingly, some of these same authors just published experimental evidence for a direct effect of temperature on growth in another bird species," adds Whitman College's Tim Parker, an expert who was not involved with the research. "This is not a new idea, but it has been largely ignored by those who have assumed that most morphological variation in birds is due to evolved adaptive variation. We need more work on the direct effects of temperature variation on development in endotherms."

Source: American Ornithological Society Publications Office [January 24, 2018]

The fossilized remains of a giant burrowing bat that lived in New Zealand millions of years ago have been found by a UNSW Sydney-led international team of scientists.

Artist's impression of a New Zealand burrowing bat, Mystacina robusta, that went extinct last century. The new fossil  find, Vulcanops jennyworthyae, that lived millions of years ago in New Zealand, is an ancient relative  of burrowing or short-tailed bats [Credit: Gavin Mouldey]

Teeth and bones of the extinct bat -- which was about three times the size of an average bat today -- were recovered from 19 to 16-million-year-old sediments near the town of St Bathans in Central Otago on the South Island.

The study, by researchers from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and USA, is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Burrowing bats are only found now in New Zealand, but they once also lived in Australia. Burrowing bats are peculiar because they not only fly; they also scurry about on all fours, over the forest floor, under leaf litter and along tree branches, while foraging for both animal and plant food.

With an estimated weight of about 40 grams, the newly found fossil bat was the biggest burrowing bat yet known. It also represents the first new bat genus to be added to New Zealand's fauna in more than 150 years

It has been named Vulcanops jennyworthyae, after team member Jenny Worthy who found the bat fossils, and after Vulcan, the mythological Roman god of fire and volcanoes, in reference to New Zealand's tectonic nature, but also to the historic Vulcan Hotel in the mining town St Bathans.

Other research team members include scientists from UNSW Sydney, University of Salford, Flinders University, Queensland University, Canterbury Museum, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the American Museum of Natural History, and Duke University.

The fossil dig site at St Bathans in New Zealand where the fossilised remains of an extinct giant burrowing bat,  Vulcanops jennyworthyae, were found [Credit: Trevor Worthy]

"Burrowing bats are more closely related to bats living in South America than to others in the southwest Pacific," says study first author and UNSW Professor Sue Hand.

"They are related to vampire bats, ghost-faced bats, fishing and frog-eating bats, and nectar-feeding bats, and belong to a bat superfamily that once spanned the southern landmasses of Australia, New Zealand, South America and possibly Antarctica."

Around 50 million years ago, these landmasses were connected as the last vestiges of the southern supercontinent Gondwana. Global temperatures were up to 12 degrees Celsius higher than today and Antarctica was forested and frost-free. With subsequent fragmentation of Gondwana, cooling climates and the growth of ice-sheets in Antarctica, Australasia's burrowing bats became isolated from their South American relatives.

"New Zealand's burrowing bats are also renowned for their extremely broad diet. They eat insects and other invertebrates such as weta and spiders, which they catch on the wing or chase by foot. And they also regularly consume fruit, flowers and nectar," says Professor Hand, who is Director of the PANGEA Research Centre at UNSW.

"However, Vulcanops's specialized teeth and large size suggest it had a different diet, capable of eating even more plant food as well as small vertebrates -- a diet more like some of its South American cousins. We don't see this in Australasian bats today," she says.

Study co-author, Associate Professor Trevor Worthy of Flinders University says: "The fossils of this spectacular bat and several others in the St Bathans Fauna show that the prehistoric aviary that was New Zealand also included a surprising diversity of furry critters alongside the birds."

Washing of St Bathans sediments through sieves in Manuherikia River in New Zealand to collect fossil bones  and teeth of an ancient burrowing bat [Credit: Vanesa De Pietri]

Study co-author Professor Paul Scofield of Canterbury Museum says: "These bats, along with land turtles and crocodiles, show that major groups of animals have been lost from New Zealand. They show that the iconic survivors of this lost fauna -- the tuataras, moas, kiwi, acanthisittid wrens, and leiopelmatid frogs -- evolved in a far more complex community that hitherto thought."

This diverse fauna lived in or around a 5600-square-km prehistoric Lake Manuherikia that once covered much of the Maniototo region of the South Island. When they lived, in the early Miocene, temperatures in New Zealand were warmer than today and semitropical to warm temperate forests and ferns edged the vast palaeolake.

Vulcanops provides new insight into the original diversity of bats in Australasia. Its lineage became extinct sometime after the early Miocene, as did a number of other lineages present in the St Bathans assemblage. These include crocodiles, terrestrial turtles, flamingo-like palaelodids, swiftlets, several pigeon, parrot and shorebird lineages and non-flying mammals. Most of these were probably warm-adapted species. After the middle Miocene, global climate change brought colder and drier conditions to New Zealand, with significant changes to vegetation and environments.

It is likely that this general cooling and drying trend drove overall loss in bat diversity in New Zealand, where just two bat species today comprise the entire native land mammal fauna. All other modern land mammals in New Zealand have been introduced by people within the last 800 years.

Source: University of New South Wales [January 10, 2018]

The National Security Agency (NSA) illegally used technology to spy on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, according to new documents from New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

The New Zealand Herald first reported that the GCSB told the nation's high court that it ceased all surveillance of Dotcom in early 2012, but that "limited" amounts of communications from Dotcom were later intercepted by its technology without the bureau's knowledge.

Dotcom was surveilled by the NSA and the GCSB in a joint intelligence operation named Operation Debut. According to the Herald, that surveillance was scheduled to end in January 2012, but the United States continued to use New Zealand's technology.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/344742-nsa-unlawfully-surveiled-kim-dotcom-in-new-zealand

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On the 3rd of August, 1985, researcher Timothy Good wrote to the Air Vice Marshal Ewan Jamieson, Chief of the Air Staff, at the Ministry of Defence Headquarters, Wellington, New Zealand, asking what the New Zealand military’s official stance on UFOs was. In a 6th of September, 1985 reply to Good, Wing Commander S. D. White, writing on behalf of Air Vice Marshal Ewan Jamieson, stated: “New Zealand’s Ministry of Defence is not specifically charged with any formal responsibility for investigating UFOs… …and neither is any other government department. The Ministry does however take an active interest in all such reports and within the limitations of its resources conducts investigations as necessary.”

By Paul Dean ufos-documenting-the-evidence.blogspot.com 7-14-17

This official statement, and quite a few others like it, was somewhat misleading.

In March, 2017, I accessed Archives New Zealand, which is that country's official national archive and records repository, and entered a series of keywords into the “Archway” search engine. Using the keywords “unidentified flying object”, “ufo”, “unidentified flying objects”, “ufos”, “unknown object”, “unknown objects”, “flying saucers” and the like, I was surprised to see numerous hits displayed in the results. Of course, New Zealand’s government has already released numerous files, so any search results which included these items were expected. What I didn’t expect was a listing of hitherto unknown files, some of which are “restricted” from public access for decades to come. I should state that these unreleased files were not totally unknown to at least a handful of researchers. British based researcher Isaac Koi, for example, discussed the existence of these records some time ago on the internet forum Above Top Secret, and Keith Basterfield mentioned some of the items in various New Zealand focused blogposts in 2010.

Before elaborating on these unseen files, it is prudent to summarise New Zealand’s first, and only, declassification and public release of government files, and, specifically, how they were released. In December, 2010, the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), who operate under, and answer to, New Zealand’s Ministry of Defence (MOD), released a number of formally classified files concerning UFO’s. Only through the determined work of Susan Hansen, the Director of New Zealand’s “UFO Focus New Zealand Research Network” (UFOCUS NZ), a civilian based research organisation, did this release occur. Hansen had worked for some fourteen months, corresponding with Lt. Gen. Jerry Mateparae, the Chief of Defence Force, NZDF, regarding the mustering, declassification and public release of New Zealand’s MOD files, some which were nearly sixty years old.

Initially, Lt. Gen. Mateparae stated that it “…would require a substantial amount of collation, research and consultation to identify whether any of that information could be released…” and that the NZDF was not able to deploy staff to undertake the task. Lt. Gen. Jerry Mateparae, however, also gave his personal viewpoint on the matter, stating:

“In the longer term, recognizing the ongoing public interest in this topic, I would like to see a summary of information held about UFO sightings produced, in much the same way as that which is produced by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. Given the existing constraints, however, I cannot predict when that objective could be achieved.”

Months later, due largely to Susan Hansen’s continued efforts, Lt. Gen. Mateparae announced that the assessing of classified UFO files by NZDF staff had begun. In a December, 2009 letter, Lt. Gen. Mateparae stated:

“I am pleased to be able to inform you that two NZDF officers have begun the task of assessing classified files held in relation to this topic, with a view to declassification. I would expect that files which are transferred to Archives New Zealand would be subject to extensive embargo periods in terms of access by the general public.”

It was on the 22nd of December, 2010, that the NZDF finally made available nine files, which totalled 2101 pages. The files contained records dating from, at the earliest, 1952, and, most recently, 2009. Specifically, the files released were “Air 39/3/3 Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2”, “Flying Saucers”, with a date range spanning 1952 to 1955; “Air 39/3/3 Volume 2, Parts 1 & 2, “Reports on UFOs”, with a date range spanning 1956 to 1979; “Air 39/3/3 Volume 3”, “Reports on UFOs”, with a date range spanning 1979 to 1980; “Air 39/3/3A Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2”, “Reports on UFOs and Ethnology”, with a date range of 1979 to 1984; “Air 39/3/3 Volume 4”, “Reports on UFOs”, covering 1981 to 1984; “Air 244/10/1 Volume 1”, “Reports on UFOs” with a date range spanning 1959 to 1983; “Air 1080/6/897 Volume 1”, “Courts Of Enquiry – Investigation of Unidentified and Radar Sightings East Coast South Island December 1978”, with a date range spanning from 1978 to 1981; “1630/2 Volume 1”, “Reports on UFOs and Ethnology”, with a date range spanning 1984 to 1989; and, “1630/2 Volume 2”, “Reports on UFOs and Ethnology” with a date range spanning 1990 to 2009. Also worth mentioning is that some of the material in these files was redacted, and thus not visible.

While I do not attempt here to give any sort of detailed, historical treatment as to what these papers contain, it is worth mentioning that most of the records are UFO reports, of variable value, submitted by members of New Zealand’s public, and, general enquiries regarding the New Zealand government’s official stance on the UFO issue.

Most, but certainly not all.

A significant fraction of the material, in fact, comprises of internal government correspondence and enquiry, and it is most certainly not all MOD–generated. Firstly, the material that is of MOD provenance includes papers originating from such entities as the Secretary of Defence; the Minister of Defence; the Chief of the Defence Staff; the Chief of the Air Staff, RNZAF; Headquarters, Air Defence, RNZAF; the Deputy Director of Air Intelligence, RNZAF; the Director of Operations, RNZAF; and the Deputy Director of Service Intelligence, to name a few. Secondly, the material on file which is not of MOD provenance, includes papers originating from such entities as the Director of Civil Aviation, Civil Aviation Branch, Air Department; the Minister for Civil Aviation; the Deputy Director of Operations, Air Traffic Control, Ministry of Transport; the Director–General of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; the Joint Intelligence Bureau; the Commissioner of Police, Police National Headquarters; the Director of the New Zealand Meteorological Service; and the Director of Carter Observatory.

Thus, it is established that numerous areas within New Zealand’s government, as demonstrated in these nine released MoD files, have had at least some involvement in the UFO problem. What, then, can we ascertain regarding the unreleased files? And how can they be declassified and released? All government files held by Archives New Zealand are indexed with metadata, which includes the title of the file, an item identification number, a code attached to the original controlling agency, a series number, an accession code, a box and item number, a record number, and various other pieces of information. Also, all files are listed as either being “Open Access”, “Restricted Access” or “Restrictions May Apply”. Unsurprisingly, an “Open Access” file can be made available to anyone, while a “Restricted Access” file is still in the legal custody of the original controlling agency, and, thus, unavailable. Such “Restricted Access” files are listed with a “Restrictions Expire” date which must be surpassed before automatic availability can occur. Steps can be taken, however, to have such files assessed and released earlier. Finally, files where “Restrictions May Apply” are releasable, but a final review of the item is required in case it contains sensitivities not noticed previously. These issues are important when evaluating the numerous unreleased UFO files listed within the Archives.

The first file of note, which should have been released in 2010, is titled “Intelligence – Defence – Unidentified Sightings”. The record number for this item is “244/1/7” and the date range spans from 1963 to 1976. The current controlling agency of the file is the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), but the original controlling agency, presumably, will be either a top–echelon division of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), or, one of New Zealand’s armed forces branches. Traditionally, New Zealand’s defence apparatus has, like most nations, always included an Army, Navy and Air Force. Either way, the file metadata gives no clue as to its origin. Moreover, as noted, this file is clearly a MoD item of some sort, and the NZDF is listed as the most recent controlling entity, so the notion that the NZDF released all of its UFO files in 2010 is quite incorrect. Having said that, the file is listed as “Open Access”, so someone in the NZDF has cleared it for release.

Another unseen file is titled “Political Affairs – Outer Space – Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)” is indexed as originating from the Head Office of the New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). The record number is “NYP 3/58/13”, and the date range spans from 1977 to 1982. Thankfully, this particular item, unlike many, is classed as “Open Access”, which means copies can be made available with relative ease. MFAT represents New Zealand abroad, and conducts official communication and business with foreign governments, international organisations and other overseas bodies. One can only speculate as to what an MFAT file may contain. One possibility, given the 1977 to 1982 date range, is that the records relate to a UFO awareness raising initiative at the United Nations, led by Sir Eric Gairy, the then Prime Minister of Grenada, in the late 1970’s. This effort resulted in a series of plenary meetings and decision adoptions in late 1977, which culminated in a Special Political Committee Hearing on the 27th of November, 1978. Finally, “Political Affairs – Outer Space – Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)” is listed as “Part 1”. This usually means, as can be demonstrated with other file holdings, that further “parts” were created, or at least planned for.

New Zealand’s atmospheric and meteorological agencies maintained UFO–related files too, The first item is titled, “Meteorological Office: Research: Meteorological – Unidentified Flying Objects”, and its record number is “42/6/23”. The date range of this file is 1968 to 1984. The originating and controlling agency for this file is the Head Office of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited (NIWAR). This quasi–government entity is described, in government organisational chronologies, as a “…Crown owned research and consulting company with expertise in water and atmospheric research”. The file is listed as “Open Access”. This is interesting, as the NIWAR was engaged in meteorological and atmospheric study, so any evaluation or assessment of the UFO issue by competent scientists is obviously valuable to researchers. Also, like other New Zealand UFO files, this item is listed as being “Part 1”, which implies a continuation of the file well beyond the mid–1980’s. No more “parts”, however, are listed when performing archival searches. As for the contents, one hopes that NIWAR conducted a reasonable degree of primary research into the UFO issue, possibly studying unknown cases, and dealing directly with other New Zealand agencies. More likely, however, is that the file contains low–level sighting reports, collections of local newspaper articles, and other mundane items. Previous experience suggests the contents of “Meteorological Office: Research: Meteorological – Unidentified Flying Objects” is somewhere in the middle.

Another file, presumably of the same ilk, is “Public Weather Service – Flying Saucers And Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)”. The record number is “2/13”, and the date range is 1956 to 1988. The controlling agency for the file is the New Zealand Meteorological Service (NZMS), but judging by the title of the file, it was specifically a Public Weather Service (PWS) record. The PWS was one of three sub–components of the NZMS. Government organisational chronologies state that the primary function of the NZMS was to “…provide and advise meteorological support… …for New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific Ocean”. The file is “Open Access”, and does not appear to be one of several “Parts” as is often the case. One can only guess what the file contains, but it is quite likely that the PWS, and its parent agency, the NZMS, acted as a clearing house for UFO reports, as was the situation in Australia. Historically, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) received UFO reports from the public, and occasionally from other government agencies. The BOM was not explicitly charged with handling UFO cases, so, typically, they would be forwarded to the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) or the Department of Air (DOA). Whatever the contents, “Public Weather Service – Flying Saucers And Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)” will contain records not seen for decades.

The infamous Kaikoura UFO incident is the subject of a file titled “Miscellaneous Files – UFO [Unidentified Flying Object] Affair (1978 Kaikoura Incident) –The Truth Is Out There”. With a one year date range of 1979 to 1979, the file was the provenance of the Magnetic and Geophysical Observatories, based in Christchurch, and the controlling agency is listed similarly as the Geophysical Observatory. This agency is indexed as “…undertaking research into upper atmosphere physics through data collected from remote ionosonde stations…”. Oddly, there is no record number assigned to the file. Its access status is “Open”. Obviously it deals with the “Kaikoura Lights” radar–visual UFO case that occurred between the 21st and 30th of December, 1978. These events involved airborne–visual and airborne radar features, plus ground–based radar confirmation. Some of the events were filmed by an Australian television crew on route to New Zealand. The Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), as well as Carter Observatory, investigated the events in early 1979. Their efforts can be found in New Zealand’s most in–depth and classified UFO file, which was released, in part, in 2010. That file is titled “Courts Of Enquiry – Investigation of Unidentified and Radar Sightings East Coast South Island December 1978”. Ultimately, the visual sightings were attributed to lights mounted on squid boats which were presumed to be reflecting off low cloud cover, as well as a handful of bright stars and planets. The primary radar hits were attributed to spurious returns created by unusually intense atmospheric conditions at the time. Whatever the conclusions, it is apparent that the newly found “Miscellaneous Files – UFO [Unidentified Flying Object] Affair (1978 Kaikoura Incident) –The Truth Is Out There” has not been openly studied.

There are three files of New Zealand Police, National Headquarters provenance. They are, “37/21/1, Part 1”, “Support Services – Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO), General”; “37/19/3, Part 1”, “Support Services – Unidentified Flying Objects – General”; and “37/21/1, Part 1”, “Support Services – Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO), General”. All three files come with a date range spanning the year of 1972 only. The fact that all three files appeared to be nearly identical made me wonder if, in fact, just one file existed, and there had been a clerical error in listing it. However, each file does a unique record number, so each file must be unique.Access to these records is restricted until 2072.

As for the contents of these files, one can only speculate. It is possible that they relate to a series of space debris re–entries which occurred near the town of Ashburton, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island in early 1972. As is widely known, several metal “space balls” were recovered by farmers in the region, and naturally a few federal agencies, including the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) and the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), showed significant interest in the discoveries, primarily from a technical and safety. Ultimately, the objects proved to be titanium gas pressure vessels from the Soviet Cosmos 482 spacecraft. American agencies, including the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Foreign Technology Division (FTD) were equally as interested, and designated the events as “Moon Dust” unknown, or, initially unidentifiable, crashed space junk. These agencies relied on the United ’States small Defence Attaché in Wellington (USDAO–WEL) and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) for their information, some of which has been released under America’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to researchers. What was less known is that the New Zealand Police were involved in handling the downed space junk. In an 15th of January, 2011 article, titled “Government Report On ‘Space Balls’ Released”, authored by Charlie Gates for “The Press” section of an online news service known loosely as “Stuff”, farmer Denis O’Sullivan, who found one of the objects, is quoted as saying:

“I picked it up and carried it back to the truck. It was sitting on my lap in the truck on the way back to the farm. We called the police and the first thing they did was get everyone to stay away from the scene and then a policeman hung his wristwatch over it to see if it was radioactive. I thought, ‘It's a bit late for that, it has been sitting on my lap on the way back’… …We thought it was an April Fool’s joke to start with. The police came and took it away. It caused quite a stir at the time. They treated it with great care because they were afraid it was radioactive.”

Possibly related to the above Police holdings is a file titled “Unidentified Objects of Foreign Origin”. The record number is “48/65/2” and the date range is listed as 1972 to 1973. Also, the file is listed as “Part 1”. This implies that there may be more “parts” to this file, but none are listed in the Archival system.

Also, the file is falls in a “Defence Documents” accession category, and is a considered “Restrictions May Apply” item. Importantly, the agency responsible for creating this file was the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). The DSIR provided scientific and technical services to the New Zealand government before being dissolved and reorganised in 1992. It is likely that this file relates to the 1972 space debris re–entries discussed previously. Both the date range and the title of the file are the two main giveaways. Moreover, we know that the DSIR was involved in assessing pieces of crashed space junk shortly after they were discovered. DSIR’s involvement in space debris analysis came to light in the New Zealand press, but also through documents released by America’s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and State Department. These two agencies produced “Moon Dust” and “UFO” reports which were released in the late 1970’s through America’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For example, a Confidential 24th of October, 1973, State Department signal, sent from the US embassy in Wellington to the Secretary of State (SECSTATE), reads, in part:

“PRESS STORY DATED OCTOBER 20 SPECULATES THAT CYLINDRICAL OBJECT FOUND NEAR KUROW, NEW ZEALAND MAY BE LINKED TO SPHERES REPORTED REF B. PRESS DESCRIPTION, BASICALLY CONFIRMED BY DSIR, IS THAT OBJECT IS TWO FEET LONG AND SEVEN INCHES DIAMETER. EXTENSIVELY SCARRED BY HEAT AND PARTS APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN BLOWN OUT BY INTERIOR EXPLOSION. ONE END BOLTED TO MAIN COMPONENT BY AT LEAST TWENTY FOUR BOLTS AROUND PERIMETER OF SCALLOPED FLANGE. THERE IS OPEN CONICAL PROJECTION AT THIS END WITH TWO SMALLER ATTACHMENTS WHICH APPARENTLY WERE CONNECTED TO OTHER UNITS. DSIR CHRISTCHURCH STUDYING OBJECT AND WILL FORWARD TO DSIR WELLINGTON ABOUT OCTOBER 31. EMBOFF HAS BEEN INVITED EXAMINE OBJECT AND OBTAIN DSIR PRELIMINARY REPORT AT THAT TIME.”

If “Unidentified Objects of Foreign Origin” is not related to crashed space junk, then one is bound to ask if the file relates to debris from a downed aircraft of unknown origin, or a meteoric event. Failing those alternatives, the only thing remaining is something even more mysterious.

Yet another file which presumably relates to unexpected space re–entries, is “Administration File – Unidentified Flying Object Seen To Explode In Western Sky”. The record number is “0070/3” and the date range is 1983 to 1983. The controlling agency is listed as the Timaru Police Department. The title of the file would indicate something along the lines of a meteoric bolide or space debris re–entry. The date range, however, certainly rules out in relationship to the 1970’s space junk events. Failing something space borne, an unsolved aircraft explosion could be the subject of the file, though one would assume that New Zealand’s Director of Civil Aviation would be in control of the file, not the Timaru Police Department. Unfortunately, the item is categorised as “Restricted Access”, so obtaining a copy will be slow, if possible at all.

Going beyond the files I have thus far highlighted, there may be far more material held by New Zealand’s government not readily obvious to the researcher. If the experience in the United States is anything to go by, there is every possibility that important UFO records will be found in non–UFO files. To be sure, researchers in America are now accessing 1940’s and 1950’s–era military records which are indexed under “unidentified aircraft reports”, “unknown aircraft reports”, “intelligence sightings”, “security sightings”, “foreign aircraft”, “aerial weapons” and so forth. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in Washington DC, and the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Air Force History and Research Agency (AFHRA), in Alabama, literally contain hundreds of the thousands of pages of such records, which are shelved in the operational or intelligence sections of squadron or wing–level holdings. The vast majority of these records, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with UFO’s, and are merely reports foreign or hostile aircraft, along with varying administrative assessments, security evaluations and other clerical material. However, a small percentage of these records, which still equates to thousands of pages, most certainly contain papers which would be considered UFO–related.

Even a very basic search of New Zealand’s archives contain possible leads. For example, a file titled “Northern Military District Auckland – Air And Naval Co–Operation Sighting Reports And Unidentified Aircraft – Aircraft Call Signs” would be a potential source of UFO reports or evaluation. Its record number of the file is “DAZ 205/9/S/4”. No date range is listed. The original controlling agency was the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and the is part of a large collection of records described as “Unit War Diaries, Unit Records and Supplementary Material”. Further, this collection was “…collected by the New Zealand Army Archives Section during the Second World War…”. Its access status is listed as “Open”.

Of possibly more interest are two Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) files created during World War Two. Their titles are “Intelligence – Intelligence re Aircraft – Reports Of Suspicious Sightings – March 1942 – August 1943” and “Intelligence – Intelligence re Aircraft – Reports of Suspicious Sightings – August 1942 – November 1944”. Both have the same record number, which is “08/19/1”, so, thus, presumably make up “Part 1” and “Part 2” of essentially the same file. The date range of both items is 1942 to 1944, and their access status is listed as “Open”. The controlling agency is simply listed as “Navy Department”. However, the files are part of a group of records described as “…sensitive Navy general correspondence” related to “…operations intelligence, personnel, security and the defence of New Zealand…”. Whether these items contain any UFO–related records, be they actual sighting reports or intelligence assessments, is entirely unknown, but it would be no surprise whatsoever if UFO’s were mentioned in some capacity.

As I highlighted at the beginning of this report, I highlighted a statement made by Wing Commander S. D. White to British researcher Timothy Good. Wing Commander White stated that the Ministry of Defence was “…not specifically charged with any formal responsibility for investigating UFOs…” and “…neither is any other government department…”. This is only partially correct. It is true that New Zealand’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), nor any other government department, did not run a largescale and properly funded UFO investigation desk, but there was, for example, an official investigative committee formed in the early 1970’s. Released in 2010, “Air 244/10/1 Volume 1”, “Reports on UFOs” contains dozens of pages of administrative memoranda penned by a group called the “Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Investigating Committee”. The scientific and technical calibre of the group speaks for itself. In August, 1972, for instance, the Chairman of the committee was the MoD’s Deputy Director of Service Intelligence, and the Secretary was a RNZAF Squadron Leader. The members included Dr E. I. Robertson, the Director–General of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR); Dr. D. C. Thompson, of the Meteorological Service; Squadron Leader A. H. Milestone, the Deputy Director of Operations, Air Traffic Control, within the Ministry of Transport; and Mr. W. J. H. Fisher, the Director of Carter Observatory. So the notion that no one within the MoD was charged with UFO investigation was misleading. It must be said that the committee never really found hard evidence for UFO’s, but that’s not the point. Rather, the group maintained a passing interest, and decided the problem was a loosely scientific matter, rather than a specific defence problem. The committee was wound up on November 4th, 1976.

As I have painstakingly aimed to elaborate on, a significant number of unseen UFO files have come to light, and some of them were maintained by agencies not known to be involved at all. The question now is one of access. On the 6th of April, 2017, I emailed the New Zealand Archives with a list of files I was interested in. On the 21st of April, 2017, Research Services Archivist Nik MacDonald–Washburn, replied, and explained the process and costs associated with file retrieval, censoring and digitisation, some of which is fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, many of the files remain in the legal custody of the original controlling agency, or whoever inherited them. Files indexed as “Restrictions May Apply” or “Restricted” need to be carefully looked at, and the researcher is tasked with approaching each individual agency to ask what can and can’t be released. This, like most government documents research, will be a slow process. The lesson learned here, yet again, is that no matter where researchers look, there are seemingly always hitherto unknown records, often classified, languishing on government shelves.
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A Greerton resident's former disbelief in claims of UFO sightings has been changed forever by what he saw above Argyll Road last night. He was awoken about 12.30am by a thud he imagined was made by a cat.

By Andrew Campbell www.sunlive.co.nz 4-6-16

“I was looking out onto our lawn when I noticed a flickering greenish coloured light moving quickly across the horizon, before coming to a sudden stop in a south westerly direction, which appeared to be somewhere toward the Kaimai Range, hovering slightly,” says Jayson Hurley.

“Finding this unusual, I ran a grabbed my wife who also witnessed this object hovering.”

The couple observed the object for what seemed like about 15 minutes, says Jayson.

He says it remained hovering in one position moving from right to left, then left to right.

Finally it stopped, the light brightened, then extremely quickly it took off straight up out of sight with no noise. [...]
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