![]() ![]() These are the islands that living Dodo?s might just be discovered on one day in the future. There are a number of minor Mascarenes islands that are scarcely visited, some of which have never even been explored. For any of the three major islands in the Mascarenes group at least. Nevertheless, the likelihood of even a few Dodo?s escaping a hungry sailors stomach or the infectious rats is remotely slim. It?s also reported from the people of Mauritius that Dodo like birds can be seen at dusk and at dawn along the beaches of a secluded rainforest known as Plain Champagne. It?s thought that these reports are either hoaxes or misidentifications of known birds, perhaps the giant petrel. A similar report appeared two years earlier, made by a Frenchman visiting Mauritius. Or was it?Īn article appearing in London?s The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that an Englishman vacationing in Mauritius spied a Dodo walking along the beach. So it appears the dodo was dead forever, extinct. With it?s solitaire cousins surviving on Rèunion until 1750 and on Rodriguez until 1800. Done in by it?s fearlessness of man and the introduction of monkeys, rats, and pigs to it?s island home, the Dodo ?officially? disappeared from Mauritius in 1681. Perhaps the most well known ?extinct? animal next to the dinosaurs and ice age mammals is the Dodo bird, Raphus cucullatus. It took its name from the Portuguese word for "fool", and was hunted to extinction within 200 years of Europeans landing on Mauritius. ![]() The dodo was mocked by Portuguese and Dutch colonialists for its size and apparent lack of fear of armed, hungry hunters. "This new find will allow for the first scientific research into and reconstruction of the world in which the dodo lived, before western man landed on Mauritius and wiped out the species," the country's Natural History Museum announced in a statement.ĭutch geologist Kenneth Rijsdijk, who led the dig, said DNA samples from the dodo bones could revolutionise our understanding of how the birds lived. The discovery was hailed as a breakthrough in the Netherlands. Sections of beaks and the remains of dodo chicks were thought to be among the find. The bones were said to have been recovered from a single layer of earth, with the prospect of further excavations to come. Researchers believe the bones are at least 2,000 years old, and hope to learn more about how dodos lived.Ī team of Dutch and Mauritian scientists discovered the bones in a swampy area near a sugar plantation on the south-east of the island. No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of bones was destroyed in a fire at a museum in Oxford, England, in 1755. Little is known about the dodo, a famous flightless bird thought to have become extinct in the 17th Century. Scientists have discovered the "beautifully preserved" bones of about 20 dodos at a dig site in Mauritius. Odf course by this time there was no Dodos left to replace the specimen with.) i think there is also a head in Copenhagen museum but that is it. A canny curator cut off the head and foot. A head and foot (badly rotten- the Ashmolean museum had a stuffed dodo till about 1720 but under a statute saying that if it got mouldy it had to be replaced meant that it was sent to be burnt. the sum of our anatomical knowledge comes from bones from the Mare aux songes swamp in Mauritius. There are NO stuffed Dodos anywhere in the world. museum one is a model, although the curator of the museum- Andrew Kitchener- is a bit of an expert on Dodos so its probably quite a good likeness. Should be in this months ScienceĭerekH- the chambers st. One of his Post grads is working right now on Dodo DNA and how it evolved from mere pigeons. The guy who cloned the complete mitochondrial genome of the giant Moa. Was down in oxford last week speaking to Dr. I want to do my PhD on phylogenetics of extinct species. Hey guys- this is what i kinda know about. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |