Scientists Recreate the Dodo With Fossils, Bone Fragments

By The Daily Telegraph
May 12, 2008

LONDON — They were all wiped out before science had a chance to discover them, but only the dodo's name has lived on. However, experts have now been able to reconstruct the appearance of dozens of long-extinct birds and animals from the same remote tropical isles where the dodo lived.

The islands of Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues, in the Indian Ocean, were home to hundreds of unique and rare creatures before humans first set foot there in 1598. In about 150 years, at least 45 species of birds, reptiles, and mammals were lost for ever as a result of hunting and the introduction of other species. Now researchers have recreated how the extinct animals and birds would have looked from fragments of bone, fossils, and descriptions made by travelers at the time.

Following 30 years of research, they were able to produce detailed pictures and accounts of how the extinct creatures of the Mascarene Islands looked and behaved for a new book called the "Lost Land of the Dodo."

Among the species that vanished from the islands were 31 birds found nowhere else, many of them were flightless like the dodo.

A combination of hunting by people and the introduction of rats, cats and monkeys, which plundered the birds' nests, saw many ground-dwelling birds pushed into extinction.