IT'S ALIVE...(potentially)

Extinct elephant bird of Madagascar could live again

Towering 10 feet into the air and weighing more than half a ton, it was the biggest bird that ever lived until French colonists wiped it out more than three hundred years ago.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent (telegraph.co.uk)

But the giant elephant bird of Madagascar could be resurrected after scientists discovered how to extract DNA from ancient egg shells.

Genetic material from the bird along with extinct emus of Australia and moas of New Zealand have been collected by a new technique.

In one case the DNA dated back more than 19,000 years.

Researchers said the successful recovery of ancient DNA from eggshell "has major implications in the fields of archaeology and palaeontology".

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from aristotle.net

This is a Vouron Patra

For as long as people have been taking to the water they have been returning with stories of monsters and mythical beasts of all kinds. It is a proud tradition that has lives even today in the stories of every North American bass fisherman. Usually, the stories that ancient mariners would recount were of huge ocean dwelling beasts like the Kraken, but in the early days of discovery, sailors were often the first to tell of new lands and peoples as well. ...and like most modern day fishermen, they just had to be taken at their word.

But when early Arabian and Indian explorers started returning from their journeys along the coast of Africa with stories of gigantic birds many times the size of a man, they brought evidence...huge eggs, up to three feet in circumference. They were the eggs of a bird that would later come to be known as the Elephant Bird, or Vouron Patra (Aepyornis maximus). The eggs that the Elephant Bird laid were larger than the largest dinosaur eggs, and, in fact, I have heard that some mathmetician-types somewhere have calculated that they were as large as a structurally functional egg could possibly be...the largest single cells to have ever existed on Earth.

The Elephant Bird is thought to have been the inspiration for the Roc (or Ruhk) made famous in the stories of Sinbad and the accounts of Marco Polo. While Aepyornis was by no means as large and terrible as the elephant-eating Roc, it WAS the largest bird that ever lived. The flightless bird grew to around ten or eleven feet tall, and is estimated to have weighed up to 1100 pounds. By comparison, a BIG Ostrich will go eight feet and 300 pounds. Only the largest of the New Zealand Moas were taller, some reaching thirteen feet, but they weren't as massively built.