The Malagasy people had had contact with Arab traders over several centuries, but had fiercely resisted colonisation. The first Europeans to visit the island were the Portuguese in 1500. Dutch and French expeditions established coastal settlements after 1509, penetrating the interior 150 years later. In the 16th century, Dutch, Portuguese and French sailors returned from the Indian Ocean with huge eggs taken as curios. The French established a settlement in 1642, by which time the Elephant Bird had become very rare. The last one probably died in 1649. The first French Governor of Madagascar and Director of the French East India Company, Étienne de Flacourt, wrote, in 1658, "vouropatra - a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places may not take it, it seeks the most lonely places". In the face of human hunters, the elephant bird was retreating to remoter regions. By 1700, it was gone forever.

The elephant bird was the largest bird ever to have lived. It was a ratite, related to ostriches and emus, though it was unlikely to have been a swift runner. It had massive legs and taloned claws, vestigial wings and a long, powerful neck. Its body was covered in bristling, hair-like feathers, like those of the emu, and its beak resembled a broad-headed spear. It had evolved at a time when birds ruled the earth and had probably existed on Madagascar for 60 million years. In spite of its fearsome appearance (the legendary roc was fierce and ate elephants), it was a herbivore. It had little to fear from other native creatures on Madagascar; it was protected by its huge size and if needs be, could use its feet and heavy beak to protect itself in conflicts with others of its own kind.

The birds resembled heavily built ostriches, with small heads, vestigial wings, and long, powerful legs. They stood 10 ft (3 metres) tall and weighed approximately 1000 lbs (455 kg); although some moas were taller, the elephant bird was more robustly built. Their eggs had a circumference of about 3 ft (91 cm), were about 13 inches (33 cm) long and a capacity of 2 imperial gallons (9 litres). This is the equivalent of 200 hen's eggs and three times the size of the eggs of the largest dinosaurs. Fossilised eggs are still found buried on the island. The photo here is of a replica exhibited at Ipswich Museum, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. The island would have supported only a small, slow-breeding population and the birds were probably driven into extinction by hunting and the theft of their eggs by humans. The fact that it had existed for 60 million years (much longer than humans) and adapted to a changing world, shows it to have been a very successful species. However, it was also specialised to an island environment with no large predators and was, therefore, not adapted to survive contact with aggressive European humans.

Fossil evidence indicates several other species of elephant bird, ranging from 3 ft (90 cm) to 10 ft (3 metres), had inhabited Madagascar, though most had died out before modern humans had evolved. As well as Aepyornis, one other species, the smaller Mullerornis, probably survived into historic times. The reasons for these birds' extinction are hard to determine as there are no reliable historical records of the pre-European history of Madagascar. They were probably hunted by native people 1000-2000 years before European contact. This was probably subsistence hunting and did not threaten the birds' numbers. Egg collecting by Europeans would have been much more of a threat - such huge eggs can only be laid in small numbers and the birds probably bred slowly. Habitat destruction would have posed a grave threat to such a specialised bird.

Another flightless giant island-living bird was the New Zealand giant moa (Dinornis giganteus), a member of the ratite family. There were several species of moa, some taller than the elephant bird at 7 ft (2 metres) to the middle of the back and 13 ft (4 metres) to the head (twice the height of a tall man), although their necks probably projected forwards like a kiwi rather than upwards as usually depicted. They were more lightly built than the elephant bird, but still three times the weight of a large man at up to 200 - 275 kg. The Giant Moa's eggs measured 10 inches (24 cm) long and 7 inches (18 cm wide). Females were 1.5 times the size and almost 3 times the weight of males, leading scientists the revise moa classification and the number of moa species. In the past, the males and females had been erroneously considered different species due to this size difference. The moas occupied similar niches to mammalian herbivores elsewhere.

New Zealand was even more isolated than Madagascar and had no land mammals except bats. The first Polynesians arrived in New Zealand around the 10th century, becoming the Maori. The dominant life-forms were the giant land birds that lived in the fringes of the semi-tropical forests and on the grasslands and which the Maoris called 'Moas'. Encountering the huge birds, the Maoris made legends of the giant moa, calling it the Poua-Kai and describing it as a huge bird of terrific size and strength which, in a great battle, destroyed half the warriors of a powerful tribe with its terrible rending talons and thrusting beak

Moas were huge ratite 'running birds' like the Elephant Bird, but they inhabited the grasslands and forest-fringe in extraordinary numbers and variety. Scientists later gave them the family name Dinornithidae, 'terrible birds'. The aggressive Polynesian invaders became a Moa-hunting culture and for the moa, which had had no predators in 100 million years, the effect was devastating.

By the time Europeans discovered the islands in 1770, the giant moas had been hunted to extinction; their official extinction date is given as 1773. Europeans did not learn of the moa's existence until bones were discovered in the 1830s. The exact number of species is open to debate, the current belief is that there were 11 species contemporary with man and that higher counts were due to the sexual dimorphism. With only one natural predator large enough to tackle them (Haast's Eagle, another extinct giant) they were the dominant terrestrial species on the islands. Although the giant moa is the species that has captured the modern imagination, other members of the moa family were turkey-sized and weighed little over 1 kg. One striking feature of moa anatomy, apart from its height, is the complete lack of humeri (upper arm-bones). This means they had no trace of wings, not even a vestigial wing-structure.

There were several families of moa. Pachyornis and Emeus were hunted to extinction by the Maoris between 1100 and 1500. The powerfully built medium-sized Euryapteryx may have survived until 1700. Pygmy Moas, 3 -4 ft tall (90 - 120 cm) of the genera Anomalopteryx and Megalapteryx died out by 1800, hunted by both Maori and Europeans though there is evidence that one of the pygmy moas may have survived into the 20th century and may possibly still exist in the wilderness of Fiordland. By the time Europeans had realised the significance of the discovery of giant moas, the birds were almost extinct.

In 1838, Englishman John Rule brought back a fragment of a huge leg-bone from New Zealand. It was investigated by palaeontologist Richard Owen in London, but even then many dismissed it as a hoax or myth. It took several more years and many more bones to convince naturalists that the moa existed. A consignment of moa bones was sent in 1843 by geologist and missionary, Revd William Williams. He had studied the birds, and had recorded a sighting by two English whalers near Cloudy Bay, in Cook Straits in 1842: "the natives there had mentioned to an Englishman of a whaling party that there was a bird of extraordinary size to be seen only at night on the side of a hill near there; and that he, with the native and a second Englishman, went to the spot; that after waiting some time they saw the creature at some little distance, which they describe as being fourteen or sixteen feet high. One of the men proposed to go nearer and shoot, but his companion was so exceedingly terrified, or perhaps both of them, that they were satisfied with looking at him, when in a little time he took alarm and strode up the mountain."

In the 1850s, New Zealand resident, John White, interviewed several sealers who claimed to have eaten moas on the South Island, indicating that some birds had survived until as late as 1850. The most detailed account of giant moas came from an old Maori on South Island, who described the birds' appearance, habitat, feeding and nesting habits. He Maori described how fierce, booming male moas, guarded nesting females. He also described how the birds were hunted and eaten. Another Maori moa hunter described how the moa defended itself by kicking. Their eggs were taken as food and as curios by Europeans. In 1865, a moa egg containing an embryo was discovered near Cromwell.

Several skeletons are on display in museums in New Zealand and Europe and there are models and reconstructions based on these skeletons, on naturally preserved feathers and on oral tales of the bird and on its smaller relative, the kiwi. It is believed that moas resembled kiwis in several ways, that they were communal living and that the eggs were brooded by the males. With no need to look out for predators, their heads were probably carried forwards, like the kiwi, rather than upwards like an ostrich.

Another island giant, the Tasmanian emu, has been extinct since the 1850s on Tasmania and since the 1830s on Kangaroo Island (a 90 mile x 35 mile island; 144 km x 56 km). Unlike New Zealand, Australia had a variety of marsupial mammals and birds did not become the dominant life form. The Tasmanian emu was smaller than the Australian emu and was extinct by 1850. The Tasmanian dwarf emu was wiped out by 1830. Both were wiped out by man and by bush fires started by man. Kangaroo Island was discovered in 1802 and settled by whalers and sealers. Its emus were wiped out within 30 years. Australian emus survive on the Australian mainland in spite of extensive hunting between the 1920s and 1940s.

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