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The article says:
"Alice Storey, the leader of an international research team that dated
and tested DNA in the leg bone, said yesterday that Polynesians must
have been exploring and colonising South America long before
Europeans."

 

Colonising??! At least one landing with at least one chicken does not a colony make! This comment that the Polynesians were colonizing South America is clearing taking things to extremes. I would not be shocked if further evidence eventually turns up that shows a few Polynesian voyages reached the shores of South America (surprised and intrigued, yes. not shocked). But clearly they had no lasting impact. There are no Polynesian dialects spoken along the coast of South America. There are no Polynesian cultural artifacts. It's quite different from every other place where the Polynesians established themselves. We have possible evidence here of exploration, maybe even trade, but it's only a chicken bone. And until someone DOES find evidence of Polynesian cultural artifacts in some sort of habitation setting, there are a great many models that fit the evidence of a single bone... including, dare I say it, Gavin Menzies' goofy story of a circum-navigating Chinese fleet (or several... he changes the story frequently).

 

Additionally, I think poultry everywhere should be outraged at this clear insult to their navigational skills. Who says they needed a human, Polynesian or otherwise, to carry them to America.They may well have sailed their own avian arks! I can see it now: the Chicken of the Sea...

 

It's interesting to note that the press accounts of this discovery all say something like 'Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas' with no mention of any earlier contact --as if no one had ever heard of the Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland which predates the aforementioned sea-going chicken.