Giant egg up for auction

If you've got a hankering for an egg the size of your head and have close to $50K to spare, you're in luck. Christie's auction house will be auctioning off a giant egg on April 24. The egg, 100 times the size of a chicken egg, is from the elephant bird. The egg is fossilized, fully intact and in mint condition.

Elephant birds were flightless birds that measured about 10 feet in height and lived in Madagascar until they became extinct in the 18^th century. They would have looked similar to the ostriches of today and been about 11 feet tall. Scientists believe their extinction may be due to disease, or by overhunting these huge eggs. One egg would have been enough to feed a family.

The egg being auctioned is a foot high and 9 inches in diameter. It is expected to sell for $45,000. Christie's is also auctioning off a bone fragment from the dodo, another flightless bird from the island Mauritius that became extinct sometime during the 17^th century. The bone is believed to have been excavated during an 1865 dig.  Christie's expects the bone fragment to go up to $22,000.

Scientists are concerned that the auction of these items may result in increased theft from collections or fossil sites. Julian Hume, zoologist at London's Natural History Museum, tells LiveScience that the very same happened in the mid-1860s at the Mare aux Songes site (the place where the dodo bird bone fragment came from).  At that time, 100 bones were sold for £100. As more people wanted to get in on the action, the site was depleted of fossil material within a few years.

Do you think archaeological finds like these should be sold, or should they be donated to museums? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Matt Dunham.