Explanation From Original OP:

The Arabian ostrich (Struthio camelus syriacus) was a subspecies of ostrich once found commonly throughout much of the Near East. They originally spread out of Africa when the Sahara and Arabia were wetter but after these regions began to dry out in the mid-Holocene, the Arabian ostrich became a somewhat stranded population which was slowly pushed out of its limited range with the expansion of human civilization. In ancient Mesopotamia, they were a popular animal to pursue on royal hunts and their giant eggs were considered a delicacy. Greco-Roman imagery in the region loved to portray the funny running animals. With the coming of the Islamic Golden Age, they frequently featured in texts about animals where they continued to symbolize luxury through their magnificent feathers and as animals rich people might hunt. Scholars considered them halal to consume as long as they were properly slaughtered. They even became lavish gift animals that might be sent to foreign powers for diplomatic reasons, some making it even as far as Tang China where they are described as a prominent Arabian bird. Sadly, hunting and desertification made the Arabian ostrich an endangered subspecies and they became very rare. It’s unclear exactly when the last ones died out as they were pushed into pretty inhospitable regions of the Saudi desert but it was sometime after the 1920s with claimed sightings into the 1940s. In some parts of the Arabian Desert, keen collectors are still able to spot and pick up fragmentary ostrich eggshells on the ground.

Sad :(