had a dwarf elephant and a dwarf hippopotamus. Madagascar was home
to three species of pygmy hippos, a family of enormous flightless birds
known as elephant birds, and several species of giant lemurs. New
Zealand’s megafauna was remarkable in that it was exclusively avian. The
Australian paleontologist Tim Flannery has described it as a kind of
thought experiment come to life: “It shows us what the world might have
looked like if mammals as well as dinosaurs had become extinct 65 million
years ago, leaving the birds to inherit the globe.” On New Zealand,
different species of moas evolved to fill the ecological niches occupied
elsewhere by four-legged browsers like rhinos and deer. The largest of the
moas, the North Island giant moa and the South Island giant moa, grew to
be nearly twelve feet tall. Interestingly enough, the females were almost
twice as giant as the giant males, and it is believed that the task of
incubating the eggs fell to the fathers. New Zealand also had an enormous
raptor, known as the Haast’s eagle, which preyed on moas and had a
wingspan of more than eight feet.
The largest moas grew to be nearly twelve feet tall.
What happened to all these Brobdingnagian animals? Cuvier, who was
the first to note their disappearance, believed they had been done in by