The discovery of moa bones near Taihape will shed more light on the historic nature of the extinct bird's numbers and environment near the Central Plateau.
Hundreds of bones were discovered in an old swamp on a farm just south of Taihape this year. A fortnight ago a party from Victoria University of Wellington's Maori studies department spent a weekend excavating the site.
"It's an old swamp. It's been a swamp for thousands of years," Professor Peter Adds said.
The group of about 25 spent three days on site in what was dubbed Operation Moa. It was the first controlled excavation of moa bones since about 1970. "We recovered probably about 80 bones in total and bone fragments," Mr Adds said.
"We've essentially quadrupled the number of moa bones from the volcanic plateau." The bones were from two or three different species and from between 20 and 50 different animals but no whole skeletons had been found.