NICK EICHER, HOST: Curators at the Buffalo, New York Museum of Science thought they had a model of an elephant bird egg.

They assumed the three pound, 28- inch circumference egg couldn’t be real.

But recently while cataloging some of their collection in storage, curators discovered they have the real thing:  one of the relatively few actual eggs left by the extinct bird.

The flightless elephant bird was native to Madagascar and could weigh up to 1,000 pounds. It’s been extinct for at least 400 years.

Curators proudly put their authentic egg back on display.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

(The Buffalo Museum of Science via AP) A rare elephant bird egg that curators recently realized is an actual egg from the extinct creature, had previously been mislabeled as a model.