Stop 13 - Aepyornis Maximus Fossilised Egg
This large fossil bird's egg was discovered near Cervantes in Western Australia. It was found exposed in sand dunes about 300 metres inland from the coast and has been radiocarbon dated to about 2000 years.
It comes from a now extinct Madagascan elephant bird. This bird reached gigantic sizes of up to 2 and half metres tall and would have weighed more than half a tonne. You can see what it looked like in the full scale image next to you. It's the second specimen discovered on our coast, the first was found at Scott River near Augusta in 1930. The discovery of this first egg caused quite a stir and people challenged its authenticity. After all, how could a large egg float across the Indian Ocean and be washed up on a beach intact? The discovery of this second egg however, supports the idea that these specimens have floated nearly 7000 kilometres across the open ocean, aided by wind and currents to arrive here. This process is described as ‘rapid drifting'.
We have also had other eggs arrive by the same means. Two King Penguin eggs have washed up on Western Australian beaches all the way from the sub-Antarctic, most probably the Kerguelen Islands some 2000km away from Australia. Yet another egg, from an ostrich, was retrieved from a dredge in the Timor Sea, just south of Timor, northwest of the Western Australian coastline.
This concept of rapid drifting is also supported when we look at the origins of floats and buoys that arrive on our shore. `
This egg was perhaps first swept south from Madagascar with the Eastern Madagascan current and then transported across the ocean on the south Indian Ocean current. This egg's epic journey demonstrates the power of wind and currents in the South Western region of the Indian Ocean.
