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Science Quickly

This Gargantuan Bird Weighed as Much as a Sports Car

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.31.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate.

Transcript

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0:30.4

For people who've never heard of an elephant bird, what do they need to know?

0:36.4

I think first off, the size. They are colossal.

0:43.6

I'm Flora Lichtman with Scientific Americans Science Quickly.

0:49.4

This is episode two of my homage to Earth's real big birds. Last episode we talked about the

0:56.5

biggest bird to fly. Today, we're homing in on the heaviest bird to set its

1:01.7

scaly foot down on planet Earth. The elephant bird. They are outstanding.

1:09.2

This is elephant bird expert and paleontologist James Hansford.

1:12.8

Just absolutely titans of the bird world.

1:15.5

Elephant birds lived in Madagascar. They seem to be mostly herbivorous, none of them flew,

1:21.2

and there were a number of different species that ranged from the size of an ostrich to the size

1:26.1

of a smart car. The biggest I've measured was to somewhere around 1,900 pounds.

1:33.7

I'm having a hard time really even picturing that. How do you even picture it?

1:42.1

Well, when I measured the leg bones, so particularly in this case, it was a femur. It was

1:46.5

overfoot in circumference. So that is a joint novel.

1:51.7

Oh my god. The circumference of the femur is overfoot.

1:57.6

Yeah.

2:01.9

Shot the clock up.

...

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