WELLINGTON, July 26 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's endangered flightless birds including takahe, weka and great spotted kiwi birds, are seeking refuges in the locations where six species of giant flightless birds moa last lived before going extinct, research showed on Friday.

The new research shows that the ghosts of species past can provide invaluable insights for conservation efforts directed at New Zealand's living flightless birds, highlighting the immense importance of protecting remote, wild places.

International researchers, led by scientists from the University of Adelaide, used fossils and computer modeling to make the discovery, shedding light on a mystery with important conservation benefits.

This discovery, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, found these moa graveyards to be in the same isolated, cold, mountainous environments that harbor many of the last populations of New Zealand's most threatened flightless birds nowadays.

These lands, however, continue to be impacted by humanity, researchers said.

Although recent drivers of the decline of New Zealand's native flightless birds are different from those that caused the ancient extinctions of moa, this research shows that their catalysts remain similar, said lead author Sean Tomlinson from the University of Adelaide.

The study also provides an important new method for understanding past extinctions on islands where fossil and archaeological data are limited, which is the case for most Pacific Islands.

Led by the University of Adelaide, the research was jointly conducted by the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Auckland, and New Zealand's Landcare Research.