It was the largest bird in the world. He weighed as much as a dinosaur.

A new study reveals that the world's largest bird – a newly identified species of bird elephant – weighed as much as a dinosaur when it swarmed around Madagascar more than 1,000 years ago.

This monster bird is now extinct, but it weighed up to 1,760 pounds. (800 kilograms), or about seven modern ostriches when he was alive. He also had a height of 9.8 feet (3 meters) – a good 20 inches taller than an ostrich.

And like the ostrich, this elephant could not fly. [15 of the Largest Animals of Their Kind on Earth]

The researchers actually collected the bones of elephant birds (Aepyornithidae) since the mid-1800s, but they attributed the new giant to another species of elephant bird, known as Aepyornis maximussaid James Hansford, principal investigator of the study, a postdoctoral fellow at the Zoological Institute of the Zoological Society of London.

"Understanding the diversity of these extinct giant birds has been a taxonomic node for 150 years," Hansford told Live Science. Paleontologists were so enthusiastic about the discovery of elephant birds in the 1800s and early 1900s, they started naming species left and right, often from incomplete specimens.

To set the record straight, Hansford used a tape measure and stirrups to analyze hundreds of elephant bird bones found in museums around the world. Some of these bones were broken. So he designed a computer program to fill the gaps.

<Img class = "lazy pure-img" src = great "https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS84OTgvb3JpZ2luYWwvVm9yb21iZS10aXRhbi1ib25lcy5qcGc/MTUzNzkxMzEzOQ==" data-src = "w https://img.purch.com/ / 640 / aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS84OTgvaTAyL1Zvcm9tYmUtdGl0YW4tYm9uZXMuanBnPzE1Mzc5MTMxMzk = "alt =" The bones of Titan of Vorombe that the researchers found in Madagascar. "/>

After tracing the size of the bones in a computer program, Hansford discovered that these bones were divided into distinct groups, revealing three genera (also called genera) and four distinct species. He named the new poultry Titan of Vorombe, whose gender name means "big bird" in Malagasy. His name, "Titan"is a return to Aepyornis TitanBritish paleontologist C.W. Andrews mistakenly used to double the bird. Later, he was (again) erroneously classified as another species of elephant bird, A. maximus.

As a funny note, C.W. Andrews was friends with the English writer H.G. Wells, who wrote a short story of joking after naming these large birds Aepyornis maximus and Aepyornis titan, "they have more [even larger] Aepyornises … A scientific swell will burst a blood vessel. "

Fortunately, no blood vessel burst when Hansford discovered V. titanwhich is even bigger than A. maximus, previously considered the largest bird in the world. (In the past, some scientists have argued that the largest bird ever recorded was moa, another flightless bird that used to be in New Zealand. V. titan, the record holder is clear, said Hansford.)

<Img class = "lazy pure-img" src = great "https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS84OTcvb3JpZ2luYWwvVm9yb21iZS10aXRhbi0uanBnPzE1Mzc5MTMxMDI=" data-src = "https://img.purch.com/w/640 / aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS84OTcvaTAyL1Zvcm9tYmUtdGl0YW4tLmpwZz8xNTM3OTEzMTAy "alt =" The newly identified elephant species Titan of Vorombe, the biggest bird recorded. "/>

V. titan is so big, that its average weight is 1,430 lbs. (650 kg) is comparable to Europasaurus, a small sauropod (a long-necked dinosaur), which weighed about 1,600 pounds (690 kg), wrote in Hansford's study and co-investigator Samuel Turvey, a professor at the Zoological Society of London.

When herbivorous elephant birds disappeared about 1,000 years ago – largely because of human hunters – the ecosystem of Madagascar has changed. The plants that depended on the birds to eat and disperse the seeds were struggling.

Elephant birds "have undoubtedly had a significant impact on creating and maintaining the landscape in ancient Madagascar," Hansford said. "And their extinction has left a hole that we must think to keep in their absence." [In Images: Wacky Animals That Lived on Mauritius]

Indeed, "we use the past to inform conservation plans," Hansford said.

The new discovery "probably cements the fact that it's the biggest bird," said Daniel Ksepka, an expert in fossil birds and curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, who was not involved in the research.

Ksepka noted that even though DNA is rapidly degrading in hot places such as Madagascar, it would be interesting for researchers to be able to extract DNA from elephant bones. This is because the female is almost twice as large as the male, so it is possible that some of these birds are only males and females of the same species. However, the researchers wrote that this is unlikely because there are "complex patterns of variation" between different bone groups.

The study was published online Wednesday, September 26 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Originally published on Live Science.