Aepyornithiformes
| Elephant birds Temporal range: Quaternary |
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| Aepyornis maximus skeleton and egg | |
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Extinct (17th century or earlier)
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Clade: | Novaeratitae |
| Order: |
†Aepyornithiformes Newton, 1884 |
| Family: |
†Aepyornithidae Bonaparte, 1853 |
| Type species | |
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†Aepyornis maximus Hilaire, 1851 |
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| Genera | |
| Diversity | |
| 2 genera, 7 species | |
Elephant birds are members of the extinct family Aepyornithidae. Elephant birds were large to enormous flightless birds that once lived on the island of Madagascar. They became extinct, by the 17th or 18th century if not earlier, for reasons that are unclear, although human activity is the suspected cause. Elephant birds comprised the genera Mullerornis and Aepyornis. Aepyornis was among the heaviest of birds (the extinct Dromornis stirtoni of Australia reached a similar weight). While they were in close geographical proximity to the ostrich, elephant birds' closest living relatives are kiwis, suggesting that ratites did not diversify by vicariance during the breakup of Gondwana but instead evolved from ancestors that dispersed more recently by flying.
The elephant birds, which were giant ratites native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions. In 1659, Flacourt wrote: "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places may not take it, it seeks the most lonely places."Marco Polo also mentioned hearing stories of very large birds during his journey to the East during the late 13th century. These accounts are today believed to describe elephant birds.Aepyornis, believed to have been more than 3 m (9.8 ft) tall and weighing perhaps in the range of 350 to 500 kg (770 to 1,100 lb), was at the time the world's largest bird. Only the much older species Dromornis stirtoni from Australia is known to rival it in size among the fossil record and is reported to have shared the same estimated upper weight, 500 kg (1,100 lb). Remains of Aepyornis adults and eggs have been found; in some cases the eggs have a length up to 34 cm (13 in), the largest type of bird egg ever found. The egg weighed about 10 kg (22 lb). The egg volume is about 160 times greater than that of a chicken egg.
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