The director explained that "every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa," a flightless bird similar to an ostrich that went extinct 600 years ago.

Paul Scofield, a project adviser and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the “Lord of the Rings” director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented.

In an ambitious attempt, Jackson is backing a $15 million project to bring back the ’12-foot flightless bird’ known as the moa