Madagascar is home to some of the world’s most unique and remarkable species. However, one of its most awe-inspiring residents, the elephant bird, vanished from the planet roughly 1,000 years ago.

History has not been kind to the elephant bird of Madagascar. Standing nearly 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,000 pounds — or so researchers believed — this flightless cousin of the ostrich went ...

Madagascar is home to some of the world’s most unique flora and fauna. And, up until about a thousand years ago, it was home to the world’s largest known bird species. Meet Madagascar’s legendary ...

This is Episode Two of a four-part Fascination on really big birds. You can listen to Episode One here. Flora Lichtman (tape): For people who’ve never heard of an elephant bird, what do they need to ...

You may have thought Big Bird was unrealistically gigantic, but he's still not the largest bird to ever walk the Earth. That honor goes to elephant birds, which stood 10 feet tall and roamed ...

It was 10 feet tall and weighed more than 1,000 pounds. But that didn’t stop it from going extinct. An intact, fossilized specimen of the world’s largest egg—of any known species ever on Earth—entered ...