Elephant bird

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 65.27.241.136 (talk) at 22:53, 21 March 2007. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Elephant birds
Extinct (16th century)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Aves
Superorder:
Paleognathae
Order:
Struthioniformes
Family:
Aepyornithidae
Genera

Aepyornis
Mullerornis

Elephant birds are an extinct family of flightless birds made of the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis. These large birds, which were native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 16th century. Aepyornis was the world's largest bird, believed to have been over three metres (10 feet) tall and weighing more than half a tonne (500 kilograms, or 1,100 pounds), until being dethroned by Phorusrhacidae (in skull size. not mass) in October 2006. [1] Remains of Aepyornis adults and eggs have been found; in some cases the eggs have a circumference of over one metre (three feet) and a length up to 34 cm (Mlíkovsky, 2003). Four species are usually accepted in the genus Aepyornis today; A. hildebrandti, A. gracilis, A. medius and A. maximus (Brodkorb, 1963), but the validity of some is disputed, with numerous authors treating them all in just one species, A. maximus. Aepyornis was a ratite, related to the ostrich; it could not fly, and its breast bone had no keel. Because Madagascar and Africa separated too long ago for the ratite lineage (see Yoder and Nowak, 2006), Aepyornis had been thought to have dispersed and become flightless and gigantic in situ (van Tuinen et al., 1998); but a landbridge from elsewhere in Gondwana to Madagascar for the elephant bird - ostrich lineage was probably available around 85 million years ago (Hay et al. 1999). However, subfossil Aepyornis fragments have not yet been successfully sequenced for mitochondrial DNA (Cooper et al. 2001).

While it is often believed that the extinction of the Aepyornis was an effect of human actions, a study in 2000[citation needed] (see Pearson and Godden 2002 for a general account), by a team of archaeologists from Sheffield University and Royal Holloway University in the UK, suggests otherwise. Their study in Madagascar aimed to investigate human relationships with this bird, and stated that there was no evidence for the suggestion that the bird had been hunted to extinction. The archaeologists also suggest that the killing of the bird may have been taboo, or "fady," as no evidence was found that it had been killed for food.

But it may have died out because of side-effects of humans deforesting and farming and grazing livestock.

The ancient Malagasy name for the bird is Vorompatra, meaning "bird of the Ampatres". The Ampatres are today known as the Androy region of southern Madagascar (Pearson and Godden, 2002: 139) [2]. Indeed, Étienne de Flacourt wrote (1658), "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". [3].

Aepyornis maximus is commonly known as the 'elephant bird', a term that apparently originated from Marco Polo's account of the rukh in 1298, although he was apparently referring to an eagle-like bird strong enough to "seize an elephant with its talons" (Pearson and Godden, 2002: 121). Sightings of eggs of elephant birds by early sailors (e.g. text on the Fra Mauro map of 1467-69) could easily have been attributed to giant raptors, but the legend of the roc could also have originated from sightings of a giant subfossil eagle related to the African Crowned Eagle and like it large enough to carry off large primates (lemurs retain a fear of aerial predators) and which has been described in the same genus from Madagascar (Goodman, 1994).

Tales may have persisted for centuries in folklore memory, but it is not certain how recently the Aepyornis died out, but there is archaeological evidence of Aepyornis from a radiocarbon-dated bone at 1880 +/- 70 BP (= c. 120 AD) with signs of butchering, and on the basis of radiocarbon dating of shells, about 1000 BP (= c. 1000 AD) (see discussion and references in Hawkins and Goodman, 2003: 1029).

Occasionally the subfossilised eggs are found intact, but the National Geographic Society in Washington holds a specimen of an Aepyornis egg which was discovered by Luis Marden in 1967. The specimen is intact and contains an embryonic skeleton of the unborn bird.

File:Elephantbird-egg.jpg
Reconstruction of Elephant Bird Egg, Ipswich Museum, England

Elephant Bird Species

In literature

  • H.G. Wells wrote a short story entitled Aepyornis Island about the bird. It was published in The Complete Short Stories of H.G. Wells (ISBN 0-7538-0872-2). Full text.

References

  • Brodkorb, Pierce (1963): Catalogue of Fossil Birds Part 1 (Archaeopterygiformes through Ardeiformes). Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences 7(4): 179-293. PDF fulltext
  • Cooper, A., Lalueza-Fox, C., Anderson, S., Rambaut, A. and Austin, J. 2001. Complete mitochondrial genome sequences of two extinct moas clarify ratite evolution. Nature, 409: 704-7
  • Flacourt E. de. (1658). Histoire de la grande île de Madagascar. Paris.
  • Hawkins, A.F.A. and Goodman, S. M. (2003). P. 1019-1044 in Goodman, S.M. and Benstead, J.P. (eds). The Natural History of Madagascar. University of Chicago Press.
  • Hay, W.W., DeConto, R.M., Wold, C.N., Wilson, K.M. and Voigt, S. 1999. Alternative global Cretaceous paleogeography. PP. 1-47 in Barrera, E. and Johnson, C.C. (eds). Evolution of the Cretaceous Ocean Climate System. Geological Society of America Special Papers, Boulder, Colorado.
  • Goodman, Steven M. (1994). Description of a new species of subfossil eagle from Madagascar: Stephanoaetus (Aves: Falconiformes) from the deposits of Ampasambazimba Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 107: 421-428.
  • http://digimorph.org/specimens/Aepyornis_maximus/
  • http://www.geocities.com/vorompatra/index.html
  • Fossil Aepyornithidae
  • Pearson, Mike Parker and Godden, K. (2002). In search of the Red Slave: Shipwreck and Captivity in Madagascar. Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
  • Mlíkovsky, J. 2003: Eggs of extinct aepyornithids (Aves: Aepyornithidae) of Madagascar: size and taxonomic identity. Sylvia, 39: 133–138.
  • van Tuinen, Marcel, Sibley, Charles G. and Hedges, S. Blair (1998). Phylogeny and Biogeography of Ratite Birds Inferred from DNA Sequences of the Mitochondrial Ribosomal Genes. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 15(4): 370–376. [available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/images/Lab%20Members/Marcel/MBE98.pdf]
  • Yoder, Anne D. and Nowak, Michael D. 2006. Has Vicariance or Dispersal Been the Predominant Biogeographic Force in Madagascar? Only Time Will Tell. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 37: 405-431. (doi: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.37.091305.110239).

See also

Gallery

Aepyornis

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elephant_bird&oldid=116896532"