What’s the Biggest Bird in the World?

The first sliver of fossil he exposed gave volunteer James Malcom pause. He called over his supervisor, Albert Sanders, to take a look. Sanders, curator of the Charleston Museum at the time, was leading the group working its way across a field at the Charleston International Airport. It was 1983, and the site was slated to be part of a new runway. The team had been tasked with excavating anything important from the area before it was turned into tarmac.

Malcolm and Sanders knew they were looking at something enormous. Perhaps, they thought, it was a whale—after all, the Chandler Bridge rock formation beneath the South Carolina city was a prehistoric seabed, a reminder that 25 million years ago, the region was open ocean. Fossil remains of ancient rays, skates, and a toothed whale had been found at the site in the past. But this was no fish or marine mammal. It was a bird.

Using a backhoe, the team eventually removed a skull, along with bones from the shoulder, leg, and wing. The fossils sat in the museum for decades, unstudied until paleontologist David Ksepka took a look at what remained of the animal that, in 2014, he would name Pelagornis sandersi. The ancient bird’s wingspan was an astounding 24 feet—without question the largest wingspan of any bird known. But whether P. sandersi was the biggest bird ever depends on how we define the term.

For example, although the Charleston fossil had the widest wingspan, the bird was incredibly light, less than 90 pounds, or “about the same as a large German Shepherd dog,” says Ksepka, now a curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

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