“Prof Worthy said one of his students came across the parrot’s bones by chance in his laboratory during a research project.”
The parrot fossil had been excavated from its New Zealand site in a sitting position superior to the right shoulder of a very very large pirate.
Was the pirate also fossilized? 
(If so, I look forward to a lengthy discussion on the scientific and theological implications 
).
The first project to sequence every living member of a species. (Unless someone sequenced a white rhino…and their is Spix’s macaw…)
Here’s a surprising fact:
Beginning in 2015, the Kākāpō 125 project aimed to sequence the genome of all living kakapo, as well as some museum specimens – the first time an entire species has had its genome sequenced.[23]
It’s not the first time if you count Lonesome George, the last member of the Pinta Island species of giant tortoise, whose DNA was sequenced before then.
Back then, pirates had giant attack parrots.
For the elderly among us, here’s an old TV clip about Lonesome George, as introduced by Johnny Cash:
(@Michael_Callen, I’ll bet that you remember “Lonesome George” George Gobel from his heyday.)
And because that was long before the Great Vowel Shift, those giant pirates said, “aerrrrrrrgh!” instead of “arrrrrrgh!” (That was an inside joke for historical linguists.)
POSTSCRIPT: Robert Newton was the first to “talk like a pirate” in what has become a stereotypical way in his 1950’s portrayal of the famous Treasure Island character. The actor happened to have grown up in the area of England from where Robert Louis Stevenson’s fictional Long John Silver had come. “Arr” (rather than “argh”) was basically a synonym for “yes” in that area of England, and Newton decided to use that distinctive word and his native dialect in general. Because most pirates came from other areas of England and the world, it is unlikely that many pirates were prone to saying “arr” in routine conversation aboard ship.
For those too young to recall the popular movie character from the 1950’s (and the Wonderful World of Disney TV show of the 1960’s), here’s a illustrative compilation from an Australian sequel featuring Newton in his familiar role.
Hahaha… well played, Jonathan!!
That was awesome!! Thanks Allen! Miss that Johnny Cash!!
A Boy Named Sue is memorable. 
But A Boy Named Arrrrrgh would be even more memorable.
Sue said that a lot.
Dale, here’s a photo of Sue saying exactly that:
(That was right after Sue had eaten one of those giant parrots from New Zealand.)
“In those days there were giants in the earth.”
^^^ It’s all right there! 
I don’t remember that one! 
Professor Worthy was heard to exclaim, …
“This, is a dead parrot!”
A video of that conversation is available!
Not a dead parrot:
This is quite cool. It makes a bigger point that birds becoming big once flightless is no big deal.They all can do it in the right situation. Thats why they should only be seen in a spectrum. They still try to say big flightless birds are related or different then others. This is another error from the past.
This spectrum therefopre, I say, should be extended to the fossil record and that into theropod dinosaurs. They also are just big flighjtless birds.
On this story there were some links about feathered dinos that are welcomed. It shows the fossils were wrongly seen as reptiles. In fact some go crazy trying to see transitions here.