Biggest Flying Bird Ever Found, in South Carolina

Sad to say the magnificent Pelagornis sandersi with its 7.5-meter wingspan and pseudoteeth lived almost 30 million years ago and is long gone.

Illustration of the Pelagornis sandersi, pseudoteeth and all.
Check out the pseudoteeth on this monster bird, Pelagornis sandersi, which is the biggest-ever avian capable of flight known to man. Reuters

You think turkeys are big. The charmingly-named Pelagornis sandersi makes turkeys, and albatrosses and eagles, look positively pitiful.

While the glorious albatross boasts a wingspan maxing out at 3.5 meters, from tip to tip the Pelagornis' wings spanned somewhere from 6 meters to 7.4 meters, say paleontologists who found a fossil of the monster bird in South Carolina. How much is 7.4 meters? Think three NBA players lying head to toe and you've got it.


Sad to say, the Pelagornis is long dead. It lived 25 to 28 million years ago. But could anything that large actually fly? Yes.


Stumpy legs and pseudoteeth








At about 22-40 kg, Pelagornis sandersi was far from the heaviest bird in history, with numerous extinct flightless birds far more massive. But unlike them, it could take wing.