Decades-old dispute over ‘biggest bird’ put to nest

Paris, September 26 

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After decades of conflicting evidence, scientists said Wednesday they have finally put the ‘world’s largest bird’ debate to rest, conferring the title on Vorombe titan — an extinct Madagascan species which was three metres tall and weighed up to 800 kg.

The research, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, also discovered unexpected diversity in these Madagascan creatures. For 60 million years the colossal, flightless elephant bird — Aepyornis maximus —stalked the savannah and rainforests of Madagascar until it was hunted to extinction around 1,000 years ago.

In the 19th century, a new breed of buccaneering European zoologist obsessed over the creature, pillaging skeletons and fossilised eggs to prove they had discovered the biggest bird on Earth. 

The research suggests that one species of elephant bird was even larger than previously thought, with a specimen weighing an estimated 860 kg  — about the same as a fully grown giraffe.

“They would have towered over people,” James Hansford, lead author at the Zoological Society of London, said. “They definitely couldn’t fly as they couldn’t have supported anywhere near their weight.”

In the study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Hansford examined elephant bird bones found around the world, feeding their dimensions into a machine-learned algorithm to create a spread of expected animal sizes.

Until now, the largest-ever elephant bird was described in 1894 by the British scientist CW Andrews as Aepyornis titan — a larger species of Aepyornis maximus.

But a French rival of Andrews dismissed the discovery of titan as just an outsized maximus specimen, and for decades the debate remained deadlocked.

Hansford said his research proved titan was indeed a different species. But he also found that its bones were so distinct from other elephant bird specimens that titan was in fact an entirely separate genus. Vorombe titan — Malagasy for “big bird”— the creature would have stood at least three metres (10 feet) tall, and had an average weight of 650 kg, making it the largest bird genus yet uncovered.

“At the extreme extent we found one bone that really pushed the limits of what we now understand about bird size,” said Hansford, referring to the 860-kg specimen. A close cousin of the now-extinct moa in New Zealand, the elephant bird belonged to the same family of flightless animals that today includes the kiwi, emu and ostrich. — Agencies

A creature that rivalled dinosaurs

• Aepyornis maximus, the first species of elephant birds, an extinct group of colossal flightless birds that roamed Madagascar, was considered the world’s largest
• In 1894, UK scientist CW Andrews discovered an even larger species, Aepyornis titan. For years, it was dismissed as an unusually large specimen of Aepyornis maximus  
• Zoological Society of London’s study has now revealed that Andrew’s “titan” bird was in fact, a distinct species, with a body mass to rival some dinosaur species