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
Sumatran elephant be too small to be viable over the long-term. By 2008, elephants had become locally extinct in 23 of the 43 ranges identified in Sumatra in 1985, indicating a very significant decline of the Sumatran elephant population up to that time. By 2008, the elephant was locally extinct in West Sumatra Province and at risk of being lost from North Sumatra Province too. In Riau Province only about 350 elephants survived across nine separate ranges. The current Sumatran elephant population is estimated at 2,400–2,800 wild individuals, excluding elephants in camps, in 25 fragmented populations across the island. More than 85%