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
Elephant not indigenous to the island but were brought there before 1521 by the Sultan of Sulu from Java, where elephants are now extinct. The African elephant was first named by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1797 as "Elephas africanus". The genus "Loxodonta" was named by Frédéric Cuvier in 1825. Cuvier spelled it "Loxodonte," but in 1827 an anonymous author romanised the spelling to "Loxodonta"; the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature recognises this as the proper authority. In 1942, 18 subspecies of African elephant were recognised by Henry Fairfield Osborn, but further morphological data has reduced the number of classified