Aepyornis

Aepyornis is an extinct genus of elephant bird formerly endemic to Madagascar. The genus had two species, the smaller A. hildebrandti and the larger A. maximus, which is possibly the largest bird ever to have lived. Its closest living relative is the New Zealand kiwi. The genus became extinct sometime around AD 1000, probably as a result of human activity.

Aepyornis

Monnier · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AepyornithidaePBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB
Mass
540 kgWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 5 of 8 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 3 of 8 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

8 occurrences of Aepyornis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

8 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Aepyornis and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Aepyornis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

94 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Aepyornis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

5 references

Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Aepyornis

Credit
Monnier
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
matt687
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAepyornithidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Geoffroy 1850