Ostrich and elephant birds

Family Aepyornithidae Bonaparte 1853

Large extinct birds, formerly living on Madagascar. The birds were flightless, had tiny, apparently functionless wings and a small, flat, ratite-like sternum. The tarsometatarsus was massive, but shorter than the tibiotarsus and only slightly longer than the femur, indicating that the bird moved slowly, unlike its relative the ostrich. Its bill was broad and depressed, the culmen with a rounded tip overlapping the mandible, showing it to be vegetarian, not the fierce predator of legend. The largest species was probably capable of standing 3 metres tall but its posture in life is unknown. The eggs are frequently found, whole or broken in Madagascar, measuring about 520 x 380 mm, and were formerly used as water containers by the inhabitants. The last survivor probably died before 1650. F ive to seven species have been described (Grandidier 1868, Newton 1896, Wetmore 1967 - full citations at bottom of this page ).

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Genus Mullerornis Milne-Edwards and Grandidier

Mullerornis (Milne-Edwards and Grandidier, 1894, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 118, 125).

Mullerornis betsilei (Milne-Edwards and Grandidier, 1894, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 118, 125 - Madagascar).

Mullerornis agilis (Milne-Edwards and Grandidier, 1894, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 118, 125 - Madagascar).

Mullerornis rudis (Milne-Edwards and Grandidier, 1894, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 118, plate 26 - Madagascar).

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Genus Aepyornis I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire

Aepyornis (I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 1851, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 22, 101-107).

Aepyornis maximus (I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 1851, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 32, 104 - Madagascar).

Aepyornis medius (Milne-Edwards and Grandidier, 1866, Recherches sur la faune ornithologique éteinte des Îles Mascareignes et de Madagascar, p. 97, note 2 - Madagascar).

Aepyornis hildebrandti (Burckhardt, 1893, Palaeontol. Abhandl., 6, 127, plates 13-16 - Madagascar).

Aepyornis gracilis (Monier, 1913, Ann. Pal. (Paris), 8, 15 and plate, fig. 10 - Madagascar).

   This classification follows Brodkorb (1963) except that two other taxa sometimes assigned to the Aepyornithidae (e.g. Grassé 1950) have been omitted. These taxa are:

Eremopezus eocaenus (Andrews, 1904, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 163 - Egypt).

Stromeria fajumensis (Lambrecht, 1929, Abh. bayer. Akad. Wiss. Math.-Naturw. Abt., F. p. 1, plate 2 - Egypt).

   The relationship and geographical range of this group have been disputed by recent authors. Present opinion is that the Aepyornithidae are allied to ostriches (Bock and Bühler 1988) and confined to Madagascar (Olson 1985)

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Full Bibiographical Citations

Bock, W.J. and Bühler, P. (1988). The evolution and biogeographical history of Palaeognathous birds. Proc. Int. 100. DO-G Meeting, Current Topics in Avian Biol., Bonn 1988, pp. 31-6.

Grandidier, A. (1868). Observations on the egg-beds of Aepyornis. Ibis, (new series), 4, 65-8.

Grassé, P.P. (ed.) (1950). Traité de Zoologie, Oiseaux, Vol. 15, pp. 817-18. Masson, Paris.

Newton, A. (1896). A dictionary of birds. Black, London.

Olson, S.L. (1985) the fossil record of birds. In Avian biology, Vol. 8 (ed. D.S. Farner, J. King, and K.C. Parkes), pp. 79-238. Academic Press, New York.

Wetmore, A. (1967). Re-creating Madagascar's giant extinct bird. National Geographic, 132, 488-93.

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