The old Arabian fairy tales and legends talk about the huge birds „ruh“ from Madagascar.
The fairy tales The Adventures of Sindbad talk about attack of giant bird against the ship.using boulders as a bombs.
Locals use to found big eggs with volume ten liters.
Paleontologists assembled skeleton of mysterious bird. Its skeleton compared to skeleton of ostrich.
The bird was 3 m tall, weighted half ton and was alike ostrich. It can´t fly. Scientist named it Aepyornis maximus. Commonly is known as the „elephant bird“. Ilustration: Vladimir Zadrazil
Our way to the forest´s swams at Ilinta river - habitat of elephant bird - was long, rough and needing 4 WD.
We found the fragments of big eggs on the sand dune.
We didn´t need to dig out the shells because they laid on the surface of sand as they were from the fresh eggs.
The shells look like the fragments of pottery, but they were from the eggs. Later it was confirmed by chemical analysis.
We tried to assemble one egg from the fragments.
Native Malgasy women came to us to look over us and then they invited us to their village in the evening.
Elephant bird can´t survive till today in the spinny busch covered the South of isle.
