Some Māori of Tainui allegiance believe that it was brought to the country from Hawaiki in their ancestral waka, but it is carved with metal tools, which the Polynesians did not have.
[1] The stone is a non-specific serpentine, weighs 2,097 g (4.623 lb), is 26 cm (10 in) long and appears to be carved with metal tools.
It depicts a bird which seems to be a fusion of a petrel (possibly a broad-billed prion (pararā)), a duck, and a dove or pigeon.
It is claimed that the carving was referred to in a number of poems or laments about its loss, and that several chiefs were extremely moved by its rediscovery.
[4] By 1995 it was kept at its successor, Te Papa, from where it was returned to Tainui by Prime Minister Jim Bolger as part of the government's settlement of their claims under the treaty of Waitangi.