24 December 2005Elizabeth Davies
The mysterious and long-extinct dodo has fascinated the nature world since it disappeared from the planet in the late 17th century. And now a newly discovered mass grave, containing remains of the lost creature, could help scientists learn more about the creature.
The cache of bones, and possibly entire dodo skeletons, uncovered by an international team of researchers on a sugar cane plantation in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, was hailed as a significant boost to modern understanding of the bird, one of the first documented animals to have been made extinct by the actions of human beings.
"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 researchers said.
Kenneth Rijsdijk, a geologist with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, who led the dig, said: "We have found 700 bones including bones from 20 dodo birds and chicks but we believe there are many more at the site."
The remains, thought to date back 2,500 years to when the dodo lived without human interference, should yield valuable DNA samples, scientists presenting the findings at the Dutch National Museum of Natural History said. The find has also alerted researchers to the potential treasures which could lurk beneath the surface of the Mare aux Songes, the low-lying swamp area in the south-eastern part of Mauritius where the fossil material was discovered.
An accurate and systematic study of the previously unexplored region is now in the pipeline, with a team of international botanists preparing to establish the process by which such a massive collection of bones, seeds and wood ended up in the swamp and how it has remained so well preserved.
The dodo species, which dwindled rapidly after the arrival on Mauritius of Portuguese and Dutch sailors in the 1500s, had been driven to extinction by 1681 and the last recorded sighting was in 1663. The bird's nonchalance in the face of hunters proved eventually to be its downfall; scientists believe the dodo did not fear human beings because it had never had any natural predators. It had become so large (with a height of one metre and a weight of around 20 kilograms) that it could not fly.
No complete skeleton of a single dodo has ever been retrieved from a controlled archaeological site. The last known stuffed bird was destroyed in a 1755 fire at a museum in Oxford, leaving only partial skeletons and drawings to go on.
In addition to the dodo remains, the find included bones of various other extinct species including the indigenous giant tortoise and a large number of seeds of partly extinct trees and plants.
Half the native bird species of Mauritius were driven to extinction at about the same time as the dodo.
