Elephant bird and humming bird skeleton study

A pencil study of an elephant birds (Aepyornis maximus) leg bones and a humming bird's skeleton I drew for size comparison back in early 2013 in the Zürich Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich. I had much fun with this one, since bird skeletons are always very complex to draw and the size comparison was just too funny. Elephant birds were native to Madagaskar and went extinct about 1000-400 years ago when humans reached the island and had big impact on the ecosystem. It is not exactly known if they went extinct due to human hunting or secondary effects on the environment.

Art done by Silvana Dettmann aka Dragunalb aka me.