Sixteen Sawtooth Stars

We visited the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point Monday. We love the dinosaur skeletons, but there’s lots more to see. In one of the last few rooms on our tour there’s a life-size elephant bird painted on a wall. He was the world’s largest bird, like an ostrich on steroids: ten feet tall and heavy as a horse. He lived on the island of Madagascar until about a thousand years ago. I hadn’t paid much attention to him before. He is, after all just a painting on a wall. But this year, the elephant bird was in the news. Twice. In April, someone rediscovered an intact elephant bird egg that had been forgotten in a cabinet in the Buffalo Museum of Science. And earlier this month some scientists at UT-Austin studying elephant bird skulls decided the elephant bird must have been nocturnal and was very likely blind. Like a kiwi bird, only much, much bigger. Cool.