Kinda sorta. The Moriori settled in the Chatham Island (a few hundred km south of New Zealand) and were later victims of genocide at the hands of a Maori tribe during the musket wars. Previously it was assumed that the Moriori came to the Chathams in a separate wave of migration to the ones that brought the Maori, but more recent evidence seems to point to them arriving in New Zealand at about the same time, then moving south.
There were a few species that went extinct between the Maori arriving in NZ and the Europeans showing up, but expecting an ecosystem to not change when a new apex predator shows up is just “noble savage” BS.
Kinda sorta. The Moriori settled in the Chatham Island (a few hundred km south of New Zealand) and were later victims of genocide at the hands of a Maori tribe during the musket wars. Previously it was assumed that the Moriori came to the Chathams in a separate wave of migration to the ones that brought the Maori, but more recent evidence seems to point to them arriving in New Zealand at about the same time, then moving south.
There were a few species that went extinct between the Maori arriving in NZ and the Europeans showing up, but expecting an ecosystem to not change when a new apex predator shows up is just “noble savage” BS.