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Facts About Giant Elephant Birds That Lived on Madagascar
The elephant bird, genus name Aepyornis, was the largest bird that ever lived, a 10-foot, 1,000-pound behemoth ratite (flightless, long-legged bird) that stomped across the island of Madagascar. Learn more about this bird with these 10 interesting facts.
01.It Was Not the Size and Weight of an Elephant but About as Tall
Despite its name, the elephant bird was nowhere near the size of a full-grown elephant. However, it was about as tall. (Note: African bush elephants range from 8.2 to 13 feet tall and weigh 5,000 to 14,000 pounds, while Asian elephants range from 6.6 to 9.8 feet tall and weigh between 4,500 and 11,000 pounds.) The largest specimens the elephant bird Aepyornis were 10 feet tall and weighed about 1,000 pounds—still enough to make it the biggest bird that ever lived.
However, the "bird mimic" dinosaurs that preceded the elephant bird by tens of millions of years and had roughly the same body plan, were in fact elephant-sized. The Deinocheirus may have weighed as much as 14,000 pounds.
02.It Lived on the Island of Madagascar
Ratites, large, flightless birds resembling and including ostriches, tend to evolve in self-contained island environments. Such was the case with the elephant bird, which was restricted to the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. It had the advantage of living in a habitat with plenty of lush, tropical vegetation, but scarcely anything in the way of mammalian predators, a surefire recipe for what naturalists refer to as "insular gigantism."
03.Flightless Kiwi Birds Are Its Closest Living Relatives
For decades, paleontologists believed that ratites were related to other ratites; i.e., that the giant, flightless elephant bird of Madagascar was close evolutionary kin to the giant, flightless Moa of New Zealand. However, genetic analysis has revealed that the closest living relative of Aepyornis is the kiwi, the largest species of which weigh about seven pounds. Clearly, a small population of Kiwi-like birds landed on Madagascar eons ago, from whence their descendants evolved to giant sizes.
04.One Fossilized Aepyornis Egg Sold for $100,000
Aepyornis eggs aren't quite as rare as hen's teeth, but they're still prized by collectors. There are about a dozen fossil eggs around the world, including one at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., two at the Melbourne Museum in Australia, and a whopping seven at California's Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. In 2013, an egg in private hands was sold by Christie's auction company for $100,000, about on a par with what collectors pay for small dinosaur fossils.
05 Marco Polo Could Have Seen It
In 1298, the famous Italian traveler Marco Polo mentioned an elephant bird in one of his narratives, which has led to over 700 years of confusion. Scholars believe that Polo was actually talking about the rukh, or roc, a mythical beast inspired by a flying, eagle-like bird (which would certainly rule out Aepyornis as the source of the legend). It's possible that Polo glimpsed an actual elephant bird from afar, as this ratite may still have been extant (albeit dwindling) in Madagascar in late medieval times.
and as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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