It turns out it isn’t the bird we thought it was. For now, what makes the Oxford dodo especially fascinating is its past. They aren’t, and the one at Oxford University Museum of Natural History is a one-off: it is the only one to preserve soft tissues, and hence could one day be used to “de-extinct” the dodo and undo what those hungry Dutch sailors set in motion more than 400 years ago. Like many people, I had assumed that dodo specimens were two a penny. My first sighting of a dodo came earlier this year in Oxford, UK, and I very much noticed and cared. At the time, nobody much noticed or cared. The last recorded sighting of the bird, now known as the dodo, was in 1662. Its chicks and eggs had been predated remorselessly by invasive rats, cats, dogs and pigs, and its habitat on the once-pristine paradise of Mauritius was destroyed. Within a century, however, it was no more. The walghvogel, meaning “tasteless bird”, was off the hook – for now. They killed and ate some, but the meat was no good, so they killed and ate some parrots and pigeons instead. The crew put ashore and discovered an abundance of wildlife, including “a great quantity of foules twise as bigge as swans”. IN 1598, a squadron of Dutch ships landed on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The scientists then used these lines to estimate the time that other events happened to the bird.Despite its eventful existence, the Oxford specimen is the only dodo with preserved soft tissues. The dodo bones show repeated lines of arrested growth, which the researchers suggest correspond to the harsh conditions of the summer months when the birds were starved of food. A stormy summer seasonĪccording to evidence in the different layers and types of tissue of the 22 bones examined, the dodo seems to have adapted its lifestyle to Mauritius's stormy summer, from November to March.ĭuring this period, heavy rain and strong winds can strip trees of leaves, flowers and fruit, causing severe food shortages for the island's animals. Some sailors' accounts have survived, but they are often limited or unreliable - seamen tended to spin their dodo-sighting tales for dramatic effect rather than scientific accuracy. The dodo died out within a century after Dutch explorers arrived on Mauritius in the late 1500s, so little evidence has been left behind of what it really looked like or how it lived. Dodos were about 3 feet tall and had grayish-brown plumage. They were also quite heavy, weighing up to 20 kg. Dodos were unable to fly because they had small wings and their legs were short and stout. 'So I was very pleased when the UCT team contacted me to say they had been given some more dodo bones to analyse and they wanted to team up.' The Dodo was a large, flightless bird that was native to the island of Mauritius. 'But it wasn't quite enough evidence to make any strong conclusions about dodo lifestyles. The researchers were initially reluctant to cut up the exceptionally rare dodo bones from the Museum's historic collections.ĭr Steel says, 'Luckily, recent excavations in Mauritius provided us with a few broken bones that could be sacrificed. This is a breakthrough for Dr Lorna Steel, senior curator at the Museum, who began the work around a decade ago. They also used information about the lifestyle of birds that still live on Mauritius. Researchers from the Museum and the University of Cape Town (UCT) combined evidence from the bones with the historical accounts of sailors that visited Mauritius, the birds' home. I would show the dodo to my friends so they can become known around town. Scientists examining the structure of the birds' bones have found new information about how quickly dodos grew, when they laid eggs and when they moulted. Id have a team of students join me and protect the dodo birds by putting them.
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