Elephant bird bird" egg after it was radiographed. It is widely believed that the extinction of "Aepyornis" was a result of human activity. The birds were initially widespread, occurring from the northern to the southern tip of Madagascar. One theory states that humans hunted the elephant birds to extinction in a very short time for such a large landmass (the Blitzkrieg hypothesis). There is indeed evidence that they were hunted and their preferred habitats destroyed. Eggs may have been particularly vulnerable. 19th-century travelers saw eggshells used as bowls, and a recent archaeological study found remains of eggshells among the remains of human
Roc (mythology) pygmy hippopotamuses. Another possible origin of the myth is accounts of eggs of another extinct Malagasy bird, the enormous "Aepyornis" elephant bird, hunted to extinction by the 16th century, that was three meters tall and flightless. There were reported elephant bird sightings at least in folklore memory as Étienne de Flacourt wrote in 1658. Its egg, live or subfossilised, was known as early as 1420, when sailors to the Cape of Good Hope found eggs of the roc, according to a caption in the 1456 Fra Mauro map of the world, which says that the roc "carries away an elephant