The largest bird in the world has been named "Big Bird"

There are only a handful of very large bird species around today, but as intimidating as an ostrich is when it looks eight feet tall, it's nothing compared to the massive birds that traveled the Earth thousands of years ago. The title of the largest bird that has ever existed has long been owned by a specific species of elephant bird that has lived between 10,000 and 1,000 years ago, but a new challenger has just usurped the throne.

The Vorombe Titan, which literally means "big bird," is now considered to be the largest species of bird that has ever existed. The researchers explain how they came to this conclusion in a new article published in the Royal Society Open Science.

As the London Zoological Society puts it, the first species of elephant bird to attract the attention of scientists was Aepyornis maximus, who for a long time held the title of the world's largest bird. At the turn of the century, a paleontologist discovered the remains of an even larger bird, describing and naming the new species Aepyornis titan.

Unfortunately, the discovery was rejected by many other researchers who thought that the bird was only a particularly important member of the existing maximus lineage. Now, with more sophisticated classification techniques at their disposal, a new team of researchers led by Dr. James Hansford of the Zoological Society of London has stated that the largest bird is indeed an entirely new, but closely related species.

The Titan of Vorombe, like other members of the elephant family, lived in Madagascar a few thousand years ago. Increasing to nearly ten feet tall and weighing over 1,700 pounds, the birds were absolutely massive. By comparison, the largest birds today are male ostriches that can exceed nine feet but weigh only about 350 pounds.

"Elephant birds were the largest of Madagascar's megafauna and arguably one of the most important in the evolutionary history of the island – and even more so than lemurs," Hansford said in a statement. communicated. "That's because large animals have a huge impact on the ecosystem in which they live by controlling vegetation by eating plants, spreading biomass and dispersing seeds through defecation." Madagascar is still suffering the effects of extinction of these birds today. "