The world's largest egg is being auctioned off in the UK on April 24.
The egg, which is a foot long and almost nine inches in diameter, will be sold at a London auction house. Christie's claims that the oversized egg should sell for up to about $45,000.
"It's the perfect timing: Easter. It's the largest Easter egg," says Christie's scientific specialist James Hyslop. "In fact, the egg is the largest egg ever laid by any animal. They are bigger than dinosaur eggs. It was laid by a giant bird that lived on Madagascar. It went extinct somewhere around the 13th to 17th century. The scientific claim for it is the Aepyornis Maximus, but people commonly refer to it as the elephant bird."
The elephant bird was a species of flightless, fruit-eating bird. They resembled giant ostriches and could grow to a height of 11 feet, making it likely the largest bird to have ever lived. Their eggs are 100 times the size of an average chicken's.
According to Hyslop, finding this type of egg is very difficult, especially one in perfect condition like the one being auctioned. According to the auction house, fragments of similar eggs are located in southern Madagascar but it is quite rare to find a complete one.
The giant egg will be featured in Christie's "Travel, Science and Natural History" in April. Other items Christie's plans to exhibit include a dodo's femur bone fragment.
According to Guinness World Records, the largest egg ever laid by a living bird weighed five pounds and 11.35 ounces and was laid by an ostrich (Struthio camelus) at a farm owned by Kerstin and Gunna Sahlin in Borlänge, Sweden on May 17, 2008.
In other egg news, an abnormally large egg was laid in Southwest China last week that not only measured three times the size of a normal egg, but also contained another egg inside of it.
