An extremely rare elephant bird egg is estimated to sell for £50,000 when it goes up for auction this week.
Believed to be more than 400 years old and 200 times the size of the average chicken egg, the 11.8in tall egg was laid by the now-extinct elephant bird, a flightless creature indigenous to Madagascar.
It is thought that the egg will sell for up to $76,000 (£49,600) when it goes up for auction at Sotheby’s in London.
‘It’s the largest egg from the largest bird that ever existed,’ David Goldthorpe, senior director of Sotheby’s books and manuscripts department, told Reuters.
‘It is related to the cassowary and the ostrich which are still with us today.’
The elephant bird is believed to have been about three metres tall and half a tonne in weight. It went extinct between the 13th and 17th centuries due to hunting.
Mr. Goldthorpe added that finding an egg as intact as this one was a rarity. In the 19th century, similar eggs were found in parts and reassembled.
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