This is a superb  and rare piece of Elephant Bird Eggshell 

While not a common bird and obviously extinct now, many people will know it from documentaries and in particular a recent David Attenborough film where he goes back to Madagascar after many years to find the origins of a shell he received as a gift years back.


The Elephant Bird is remembered in a similar vein as the Dodo in that it was made extinct by man, and it is not known exactly why they became extinct but they DID in the 17th or 18th Centuries and its thought the impact of man was involved

A real shame as they were a large and intriguing bird and would have cut an imposing figure in the Madagascan countryside - standing more than 9 feet tall and weighing up to 500 Kilograms

From Wikipedia

The elephant birds, which were giant ratites native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions. In 1659, Flacourt wrote: "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."

 Marco Polo also mentioned hearing stories of very large birds during his journey to the East during the late 13th century. These accounts are today believed to describe elephant birds.

Aepyornis, believed to have been more than 3 m (9.8 ft) tall and weighing perhaps in the range of 350 to 500 kg (770 to 1,100 lb), was at the time the world's largest bird. Only the much older species Dromornis stirtoni from Australia is known to rival it in size among the fossil record and is reported to have shared the same estimated upper weight, 500 kg (1,100 lb). Remains of Aepyornis adults and eggs have been found; in some cases the eggs have a length up to 34 cm (13 in), the largest type of bird egg ever found. The egg weighed about 10 kg (22 lb).^[The egg volume is about 160 times greater than that of a chicken egg.

You will receive the exact piece pictured -

Whole eggs are sold, but they are nearly always partly fake as they are usually made up from random pieces found on the ground and these are not always from the same egg.
They tend to have gaps closed with filler

A FULL egg can fetch several thousands of pounds.