The largest bird to ever live has been revealed as the Vorombe Titan—an extinct feathered leviathan from Madagascar.
This bird has been described as an ostrich-like elephant, standing at almost three metres tall and weighing just under 800kg.
Experts have spent decades debating which bird is the largest to exist. According to scientists from the Zoological Society of London, a study of Madagascar’s elephant birds is what brought the final answer.
Lead Scientist Dr James Hansford, from ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, says “elephant birds were the biggest of Madagascar’s megafauna and arguably one of the most important in the island’s evolutionary history” and that “Madagascar is still suffering the effects of the extinction of these birds today”.