The Pacific rat

The Pacific rat

The Pacific rat (kiore) is not native to New Zealand and could only have arrived here with humans. In 1996 scientist Richard Holdaway obtained 15 Pacific rat dates, by radiocarbon dating, that were significantly earlier than the accepted date of Polynesian settlement of 1250–1300. He dated some rat bones at up to nearly 2,000 years of age (50–150 AD). While this has been challenged by some scholars, further work in 2002 appeared to support initial findings, the earliest dates being around 200. This 2002 work is now increasingly under question. Research published in 2004 gave six dates on rat bones from a South Island cave site – all were more recent than 1250. While this does not support the early rat bone dates, neither does it disprove them.