The real reason dodo birds went extinct - Leon Claessens
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Dodos are commonly considered brainless, blundering birds that were poorly adapted and doomed to die off, making their human-mediated extinction effortless and inevitable. But that’s not the case. So, what were dodos actually like? And what really caused their downfall? Leon Claessens uncovers the truth about these misunderstood and maligned creatures.
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It is surprising how few (and only fragmentary) remains of the dodo are still in existence in museum collections: a head and foot at Oxford, a skull in Copenhagen and the bones of the upper beak in Prague. Here, you can read more about the Oxford dodo and examine interactive 3D models of the Oxford dodo head. More than a century ago, there also was a dodo foot in the Natural History Museum in London, but it has since been lost and today only plaster casts from this dodo foot remain.
Much of our knowledge about the dodo comes from fossil remains, which were first discovered on Mauritius in 1865 and described by the famous paleontologist and anatomist Sir Richard Owen, the same person who coined the term Dinosauria. Some of the best fossil skeletons were discovered in the early 1900s by an amateur naturalist called Etienne Thirioux, a fashionable women’s hairdresser who lived and searched near Port Louis, the Mauritian capital where he lived and worked. Here is a link to an interactive 3D scan of one of the dodo skeletons found by Thirioux, which were recently described in a large scientific monograph.
Historical depictions of the dodo were often inaccurate and drawn by people who had never seen a dodo. At this link, you can examine the only drawings of living dodos that were made on Mauritius, recorded in the journal of the Dutch ship Gelderland only a few years after the discovery of the island by Dutch sailors. The Natural History Museum in London has a great page on the dodo and its lost world, which also features the modern reconstructions of dodo anatomy by paleoartist Dr. Julian Hume.
Scientists are still discovering new remains from the dodo and its vanished world — see for instance here and here — that help us ask and try to solve new questions. We continue to learn more about the dodo, its anatomy, biology, life history, and disappearance. Hopefully, the lessons and new scientific information we can learn from the dodo can help us understand more about this unique creature, but also about extinction (see this great video clip by Sir David Attenborough on the topic) and how we can help other species from going the way of the dodo too! There are some great initiatives to protect and restore the remaining native flora and fauna on Mauritius, like the ones you can read about here and here.
Much of our knowledge about the dodo comes from fossil remains, which were first discovered on Mauritius in 1865 and described by the famous paleontologist and anatomist Sir Richard Owen, the same person who coined the term Dinosauria. Some of the best fossil skeletons were discovered in the early 1900s by an amateur naturalist called Etienne Thirioux, a fashionable women’s hairdresser who lived and searched near Port Louis, the Mauritian capital where he lived and worked. Here is a link to an interactive 3D scan of one of the dodo skeletons found by Thirioux, which were recently described in a large scientific monograph.
Historical depictions of the dodo were often inaccurate and drawn by people who had never seen a dodo. At this link, you can examine the only drawings of living dodos that were made on Mauritius, recorded in the journal of the Dutch ship Gelderland only a few years after the discovery of the island by Dutch sailors. The Natural History Museum in London has a great page on the dodo and its lost world, which also features the modern reconstructions of dodo anatomy by paleoartist Dr. Julian Hume.
Scientists are still discovering new remains from the dodo and its vanished world — see for instance here and here — that help us ask and try to solve new questions. We continue to learn more about the dodo, its anatomy, biology, life history, and disappearance. Hopefully, the lessons and new scientific information we can learn from the dodo can help us understand more about this unique creature, but also about extinction (see this great video clip by Sir David Attenborough on the topic) and how we can help other species from going the way of the dodo too! There are some great initiatives to protect and restore the remaining native flora and fauna on Mauritius, like the ones you can read about here and here.
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