Largest organisms is frequently poorly documented and many are subject to conjecture and estimation. The largest living bird, a member of the Struthioniformes, is the common ostrich ("Struthio camelus"), from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of and weigh over . A mass of has been cited for the common ostrich but no wild ostriches of this weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh and are the largest eggs in the world today. The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds ("Aepyornis") of Madagascar, which
Largest prehistoric animals size. Total length was probably up to in female and they weighed about . The largest extinct "Titanohierax" was a giant hawk about 8 kilograms that lived in the Antilles, where it was among the top predators. The largest-known in this group was a giant flightless "Sylviornis", a bird long and weighing up to about . The largest-known songbird is the extinct giant grosbeak ("Chloridops regiskongi") at long. The largest-known cormorant was the spectacled cormorant of the North Pacific ("Phalacrocorax perspicillatus"), which became extinct around 1850, was larger still, averaging around and . The largest-known in this group—which has been