The newly described elephant is the largest | Smart News

In the 19th century, European explorers enthusiastically painted Madagascar in search of the remains of the extinct bird elephant, one of the most megafauna now gonewho left behind huge skeletons and the bigger eggs of any known vertebrate. Naturalists then tried to classify different species of elephant birds, but their approach does not stand up to modern scientific rigors; the classification of at least one species, for example, was based only on fragments of eggshell.

A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, trying to put order in the family tree of the baby elephant. And as Douglas Quenqua reports for the New York TimesResearchers have identified a new species of elephant bird that can boast of being the strongest bird ever to roam the Earth – literally, because elephant birds could not fly.

The imposing creatures were last seen in the 17th century, probably extinguished by a combination climate change, changes in vegetation patterns and looting of elephant eggs by humans, which were about 150 chicken eggs and could easily feed several families. Scientists who have studied these birds in the past have organized them into 15 species divided between two genera.

Unfortunately, naturalists' attempts to describe birds were not particularly accurate. Few complete skeletons have been found, according to Gemma Tarlach's Discovercollectors have often reconstructed skeletons from unrelated bones. And as zoologists James P. Hansford and Samuel T. Turvey of the Zoological Society of London write, the historical classification efforts did not take into account the natural variation of taxa and often interpreted the marginally observable differences as being taxonomically important. "

The authors also note that elephant birds have been subjected to "remarkably few studies" in recent years. Thus, Hansford, equipped with a tape measure and a vernier caliper, undertook to study hundreds of elephant bones held in museum collections from around the world.

In total, Hansford analyzed 346 specimens, of which only 82 were intact. The researchers then used advanced statistical analysis to group the specimens into different groups. Their results indicate that elephant birds are only distributed in four species, and not in 15 species, in three genera. The species identified by the authors of the study are Aepyornis hildebrandti, Aepyornis maximus, Mulleornis modestus and Vorombe titan.

V. titan is a new addition to the Elephant Family Tree, but which has its roots in the work of the 19th century British scientist, C.W. Andrews. The first elephant to be described, Aepyornis maximus, was also considered the largest, measuring nearly 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,000 pounds. In 1894, Andrews identified an even larger species, Aepyornis titanbut other researchers tended to believe that the bird A. maximus, according to a zoological society in London Press release.

The new study shows, however, that Andrews' titan elephant bird was in fact a distinct species. The researchers named him Vorombe, from the Malagasy term for "big bird" and Titan in a blink of an eye to Andrews.

The team's algorithms helped them determine the size of different elephant bird species; V. Titan, Hansford tells Quenqua to the New York Times, had "twice the body mass of A. maximusThat means he could have weighed about 1760 pounds. It's also heavier than the Dromornis Stirtoni, an extinct giant bird from Australia that could weigh about 1100 pounds and is sometimes described as the biggest known bird.

It is important to have detailed information about elephants because, like other megafauna, they played an important role in the ecosystem of Madagascar: they controlled the vegetation by eating plants, for example, and by propagating seeds by defecation. The extinction of birds always has an impact on the island.

"Without a precise understanding of the diversity of species of the past, we can not understand evolution or ecology in unique island systems like Madagascar or reconstruct exactly what has been lost since the arrival of man on these he is". "Knowing the history of biodiversity loss is critical to determining how to conserve today's threatened species."

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