Museum palaeontologist Dr Julian Hume was one of an international team of researchers who spent five years assembling the anatomical atlas. Yet tradition has it that the dodo was not just large but overweight, gravitationally challenged by centuries of easy island pickings. First published 12 April 2016 1 The first virtual models of the world's most complete dodo skeletons will allow scientists to investigate this extinct bird in new ways. So freed from weight constraints, they evolved into flightless giants. With no predators to deal with and an abundance of food, its ancestors gradually lost the ability to fly. The blame for that lies squarely with the rats, pigs and monkeys which arrived with the sailors and pillaged the dodo’s vulnerable ground nests, driving the bird to extinction in the 1660s.īut what about the bird’s bulky body? Surely that aspect of dodo folklore must hold up? After all, there are dozens of 17th-century paintings and drawings to prove it. And in any case, the dodo’s trusting manner was not the cause of its demise. For a start, the dodo’s reputation for stupidity and slowness is easy to explain: if you’ve never met a predator before then why bother to flee club-wielding sailors? The dodo probably evolved from African fruit pigeons of the genus Treron which became stranded on the blissfully predator-free island of Mauritius. More precisely, the buyer purchased a set of fossilized bones belonging. I bet youd find all sorts of real-life Indiana Jones and Tintin-type. An evolutionary disaster, Raphus cucullatus was doomed to extinction from the day it was discovered by hungry Dutch sailors in the forests of Mauritius in 1598. Last week, at Christie’s auction house in London, an anonymous buyer paid almost 625,000 for the skeleton of a dodo bird. dodo Skeleton Puppet, Skull Reference, Animal Skeletons, Messy Nessy Chic. Rivalling the dinosaurs as a symbol of extinction, the dodo is renowned for being slow, stupid and fat.
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