Elephant Bird in the Spiny Forest (Reconstruction)

Elephant Bird in the Spiny Forest (Reconstruction) is an original illustration set in Spiny Forest, Southwestern Madagascar. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is hot semi-arid steppe.

This natural-history reconstruction shows a massive flightless elephant bird standing on red sandy ground, its rounded brown-grey body balanced on two thick legs. A large cream egg rests in a shallow scrape nearby. Slender thorny stems with tiny leaves rise between sparse grass tufts, while swollen baobab trunks stand beyond the clearing.

What kind of giant bird once walked through Madagascar's spiny forest?

Elephant birds disappeared roughly a thousand years ago; the plumage shown here is an artistic reconstruction, not a known preserved colour. Ancient DNA analysed by Mitchell and colleagues in Science in 2014 identified New Zealand kiwi as their closest living relatives. The landscape supplies a separate geographic clue: tiny leaves and succulent woody stems help conserve water through a long dry season. Didiereaceae spiny thickets together with baobabs and reddish soil place this reconstruction in southwestern Madagascar, rather than an open African grassland.

Terpano is a free daily geography puzzle. You study one original illustration, place a pin on a borderless terrain map, and see how close you were. There is no account and no sign-up; progress stays in your own browser. It plays in 11 languages.