New moai statue found on Easter Island volcano crater laguna

The statue was found on February 21 by a team of scientific volunteers from three Chilean universities.

The 1.6m moai found in the dried bed of the Rano Raraku lake. Picture: AFP

A new moai, one of Easter Island’s iconic statues, was found in the bed of a dry lagoon in a volcano crater, the indigenous community that administers the site on the Chilean island has said.

“This moai has great potential for scientific and natural studies, it’s a really unique discovery as it’s the first time that a moai has been discovered inside a lagoon in a Rano Raraku crater,” said the Ma’u Henua indigenous community overnight on Tuesday.

The statue was found on February 21 by a team of scientific volunteers from three Chilean universities collaborating on a project to restore the marshland in the crater of the Rano Raraku volcano. Several moai in that area suffered charring in an October forest fire on the island, which lies 3500km off Chile.

“This moai is in the centre of a lagoon that began drying up in 2018,” said Ninoska Avareipua Huki Cuadros, director of the community that administers Rapa Nui National Park. “The interesting thing is that, for at least the last 200 or 300 years, the lagoon was 3m deep, meaning no human being could have left the moai there in that time.”

AFP