The casts of the footprints show that some of the fossil bipeds of the red sandstone of Connecticut had feet four times as large as the living ostrich, but scarcely, perhaps, larger than the Dinornis of New Zealand, a lost genus of feathered giants related to the apteryx, of which there were many species which have left their bones and almost entire skeletons in the superficial alluvium of that island.
"The Student's Elements of Geology"
Sir Charles Lyell
The next group of Ratites, although it contained only the Ostrich, Rhea, Emu, Cassowary, and apteryx, he shewed to be equivalent in anatomical coherence to the third great group of Carinates, which includes the vast majority of living birds.
"Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work"
P. Chalmers Mitchell
The record of large eggs, however, belongs to the apteryx, a New Zealand bird smaller than a hen, though distantly related to the Moas, which lays an egg about one-third of its own weight, measuring 3 by 5 inches; perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the bird lays but two.
"Animals of the Past"
Frederic A. Lucas