Imagine a bird of prey as big as a jetliner, with talons as big and sharp as swords. The ancient Persians did, and named it Roc. When it flew overhead, the skies darkened, and its huge wings flapped with such power they created winds like a hurricane.
Creature Features:
Name: The word Roc is Persian in origin
Body Parts: Body as large as a jetliner, claws like giant meat-hooks and teeth like T-rex's
Where?: It lived on the island of Madagascar off the coast of Southern Africa
Legendary Origin: The Roc is part of Middle Eastern mythology. It appears several times in The Thousand and One Nights story.
Air Attack:
This ferocious bird dove down from the sky, grabbed animals as large as an elephant, and ripped them apart. It devoured the flesh or fed the victim to its young. The Roc had an unusual forked tongue like a snake's in its tooth-filled beak.
Overall Features:
Besides terrorizing wild animals and people, the Roc guarded over a secret valley filled with jewels. Adventurers were always attempting to seek the valley and rob it of its jewels. If the Roc had spotted them, it would unleash a ferocious attack. The glowing white egg of the Roc was so huge it was mistaken for a domed building by Sinbad the Sailor, an adventurer from The Thousand and One Nights stories. The Chinese emperor Kublai Khan went in search of the Roc accompanied by the legendary explorer Marco Polo. They landed in Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa, but did not find the bird.
Myth/Legend:
Big Bird
The Roc had a real-life counterpart. The now-extinct elephant bird of Madagascar was one of the biggest birds in all of natural history. It looked like an ostrich, it stood over 9 and weighed almost 1,000 lbs. Its egg was 150 times the size of a chicken egg. The elephant bird differed from the Roc in that it couldn't fly and was a gentle giant. It was hunted into extinction by the 17th Century.