Elephant bird determined that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of and stood tall, making it the world's largest bird, slightly larger than the much older "Dromornis stirtoni". Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions, though it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales passed on from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places
Elephant bird to , the largest type of bird egg ever found. The egg weighed about . The egg volume is about 160 times greater than that of a chicken egg. "Aepyornis" is believed to have been more than tall and weighed perhaps in the range of . In September 2018, scientists reported that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of , and based on a fragmentary femur, possibly up to , making it the world's largest bird. Only the much older species "Dromornis stirtoni" from Australia rivals it in size among known fossil birds. In the same report, the upper weight limits for