Dodo – Dead as a dodo

The dodo, related to pigeons (Columbidae), is probably the best-known example of an animal species exterminated by humans. References to the bird in literature and painting are common—for example in chapter three of the children’s book Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll or in the paintings of the Flemish artist Roelant Savery.

More has probably been written about the dodo from Mauritius than about any other extinct bird species. Despite its fame and the great interest it attracts, we know surprisingly little about it. No fully preserved skeleton exists anywhere in the world, and much about its vocalisations, appearance, behaviour and even the origin of its name remains speculative to this day.

Earlier depictions show the bird as a bulky, fat and clumsy bird with pathetic wing stumps. The name does not exactly suggest a majestic bird either: “dodo” may be derived from the Portuguese word “doudo”, meaning “simpleton” or “idiot”. After the Portuguese, who discovered the Mascarene island of Mauritius in 1506 or 1507, the Dutch came there and called the birds “dronten”. Even the species epithet of the former scientific name Didus ineptus, which means “stupid” in Latin, reflects the negative image that science long had of the dodo.

More recent research from 2024, conducted by the evolutionary biologists Mark T. Young and Neil J. Gostling, shows, however, that our previous picture of the dodo needs revision. Bone analyses show that the tendon that closed its toes was exceptionally strong, similar to that of modern climbing and running birds. This suggests that the dodo was an active, fast runner —quite unlike the old depictions of fat, sluggish birds that vainly tried to escape from humans by fleeing.

The idea that dodos were active and fast is also supported by an account by a Dutch sailor from 1631 who observed such a bird. It says:

“They are extremely calm or majestic; they presented themselves to us with an extremely dark face and open beak; their gait was swift and confident, and they scarcely moved out of our way.”

The Song of the Dodo. 2001. p. 354. D. Quammen

It is remarkable that this witness does not describe the dodo as ugly, stupid or fat, but characterises it with terms such as “calm”, “confident” and “majestic”. The flightless dodo, often invoked as a symbol of evolutionary incapacity , was in reality not a fat and slow bird, but perfectly adapted to its environment, the forests of Mauritius.

Dodo – Fact sheet

alternative names	Dronte, Doudo, Dudu, Walckvogel
scientific names	Raphus cucullatus, Didus ineptus, Struthio cucullatus, Cygnus cucullatus, Didus nazarenus
original range	Mauritius (Mascarene Islands, Indian Ocean)
time of extinction	between 1662 and 1693
causes of extinction	Animals introduced to the island, hunting
IUCN status	extinct

Reconstructing the dodo’s appearance

The dodo specimens we see in museums today are not actually stuffed animals, but replicas made of wire and plaster, fitted with feathers from other bird species. Since only partially preserved skeletons and scattered bones of the bird exist, such reconstructions are our only way of forming an idea of what the dodo looked like. Beyond these remains, we are dependent on contemporary written descriptions and a series of paintings and engravings dating back to the year 1600 and created between its discovery (1598) and its extinction (around 1662).

A major problem with these old depictions of dodo is that they are often exaggerated in a caricature-like way, making the bird appear ugly, ridiculous or even distorted: a clumsy body, an oversized beak, a naked face or a conspicuous feather crest on the head are some examples. Today it is assumed that later artists copied earlier ones without care and that hardly any artist ever encountered a dodo in the wild.

Contemporary depictions: the Gelderland expedition (1601–1603)

Only a few of the many 17th-century depictions of the dodos can be demonstrably traced back to direct observations. One of the most important sources is the sketches from the ship’s journal of the Gelderland, created during the voyage of the Dutch flagship under Admiral Wolfert Harmenszoon. The Gelderland anchored in Black River Bay, Mauritius, where the sailors documented numerous animals—including the dodo. The researcher Julian P. Hume examined this topic in depth in his work The journal of the flagship Gelderland – dodo and other birds on Mauritius 1601 (2003) and classified the drawings from the logbook as among the most reliable contemporary depictions of the bird.

Most of these drawings are attributed to Joris Joostensz Laerle, a Dutch cartographer and artist. His works are characterised by precision and anatomical accuracy. As in his maps, he used a technique of pencil sketches that were later worked up in ink. His depictions are considered the most realistic contemporary images of the dodo and provide valuable clues about its anatomy.

It is considered very likely that the artists of the Gelderland observed living dodos. The sailors spent several weeks on Mauritius, hunted the bird and ate it. A text noted under the sketches also documents direct contact with the species:

“These birds are caught on the island of Mauritius in large quantities because they are unable to fly. They are good food and often have stones in their stomachs, as big as eggs, sometimes bigger or smaller.”

The high level of detail in the drawings also suggests direct observation. Corrections can be seen in some sketches, indicating that the artists studied the animal repeatedly. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that some depictions are based on specimens that had already been killed.

Another unknown artist on board also produced drawings, but his depictions are less precise. Striking anatomical inconsistencies such as disproportionately long legs and inaccurate body shapes suggest that he either had less experience or drew from already dead specimens.

The Gelderland drawings are among the most important historical sources for our current understanding of the dodo. They are probably based on direct observations of living or freshly killed animals and complement fossil finds and written reports. While later depictions were often based on artistic interpretation or skeletal reconstructions, these sketches could be the most authentic surviving images of the living dodo.

The famous Oxford dodo

In the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England, there is the only known dodo specimen that still contains soft tissue such as skin and feathers. These remains come from a dodo that was brought to Europe in the 17th century, probably as a live animal that later died and was taxidermied. The Oxford dodo is considered one of the few direct sources that help researchers reconstruct the dodo’s appearance and physical characteristics.

The bird was once part of a significant collection assembled by the well-known collectors and naturalists John Tradescant the Elder and John Tradescant the Younger. This collection, known as the Musaeum Tradescantianum, was England’s first public museum in the 17th century and contained many exotic objects and animal specimens from all over the world. It was also called Tradescant’s Ark .

After John Tradescant the Younger died in 1662, the collection was inherited by Elias Ashmole, an antiquarian and friend of the family. Ashmole donated it to the University of Oxford in 1677, where it formed the basis for the Ashmolean Museum, which opened in 1683. Over time, the dodo specimen was transferred to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, most of the specimen disintegrated in the 18th century due to mould and animal damage, so that only the mummified head with beak and one leg are preserved today.

The dodo: plumage, size and weight

Most depictions show the bird with a grey, bluish-grey or brownish plumage, lighter flight feathers and a tuft of curly, pale feathers on its rear. As Hume notes in Extinct Birds (2017), the plumage may have varied in colour. The dodo’s head was grey and naked, the beak showed a mix of green, black and yellow, and the powerful legs were yellowish with black claws. The beak was impressively large and strong, with a length of over 20 centimetres. Its wings were very small and its breast musculature weak, which made it flightless. Studies of the few preserved feathers on the head of the Oxford dodo showed that they were rather firm than downy, similar to other pigeon species.

The presumably oldest report on the appearance of the dodo comes from the Dutch sailor Jacob Cornelius van Neck, who reached the island of Mauritius in 1598:

“(…) a large kind, larger than our swans, with a thick head half covered with hood-like skin. These birds lack wings, in whose place there are three or four blackish feathers. The tail consists of a few narrow, curved feathers of grey colour.”

The Song of the Dodo. 2001. p. 351. D. Quammen

Sailors sometimes described the birds as rather unattractive and covered only with down, while other accounts praised their magnificent tail feathers. Delphine Angst was able to resolve this discrepancy in reports in 2017 in a bone study at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. By analysing the microstructure of the bones, she was able to trace the dodo’s life rhythm and discovered that the birds moulted, or shed their feathers, in March. This explains why some depictions show the dodo almost naked.

The dodo was about 62.5 to 75 centimetres tall and, according to an analysis of subfossil finds, showed sexual dimorphism: males were larger than females and probably also had longer beaks. Weight estimates vary depending on the study. In 1993, the American ornithologist Bradley C. Livezey suggested in An Ecomorphological Review of the Dodo and the Solitaire that male dodos weighed about 21 kilograms and females about 17 kilograms . These estimates were based on the length of the femur in flying pigeon species, adjusted for flightlessness and seasonal fat deposits in dodos.

In 2011, Angst and her team made another attempt at estimating weight in The End of the Fat Dodo? based on the lengths of the femur, tibiotarsus and tarsometatarsus. The newly determined average weight of the dodo was 10.2 kilograms, significantly lower than in earlier studies. According to the authors, this lower weight supports the hypothesis that contemporary depictions of extremely fat birds were either exaggerations or based on overfed captive specimens. Images of “fat” dodos could also be based on birds displaying courtship behaviour with fluffed-up feathers.

A modern reconstruction: the Erfurt dodo

In 2015, Marco Fischer created a scientifically grounded replica of the extinct dodo for the Natural History Museum in Erfurt. His goal was to avoid common depiction errors and to make the reconstruction as realistic as possible on the basis of historical reports, drawings, skeletal finds and the traits of close relatives such as the Nicobar pigeon and crowned pigeons. Details of Fischer’s reconstruction decisions can be found in Reconstruction of a Dodo (2015).

For the plumage, Fischer chose feathers from eared pheasants (Crossoptilon), as these came closest to the presumed structure of the dodo’s plumage. Woolly or down-like plumage, as often used in earlier depictions, was excluded because it would not provide the necessary protection against rain in the dodo’s habitat on Mauritius. The beak was designed to be voluminous and pigeon-like, while a frequently depicted tubular nostril was rejected due to the lack of evidence in skeletal finds and historical reports.

The posture was also revised: Fischer reconstructed the legs, especially the hind toe, realistically as typical for a running bird. The hind toe serves only as a point support and does not lie flat on the ground. For the tail, Fischer based himself on eyewitness reports that mention only a few drooping feathers, and dispensed with the often depicted exaggerated tail tufts found in many historical paintings.

Little is known about the dodo’s ecology

Our knowledge of the dodo is extremely limited. Information on its diet, reproduction, preferred habitats and its role in the ecosystem is scarce and often documented only fragmentarily. The few details available come mainly from reports by early sailors and the few remains that have been found of this bird.

It is assumed that the dodo mainly fed on fallen fruits, seeds and tubers. Its large beak enabled it to swallow large fruits and build up fat reserves that helped it survive times of food scarcity. Historical depictions and reports sometimes suggest that the birds were quite plump, which is consistent with the fat and lean cycles documented for many Mauritian vertebrates, both living and extinct.

Like modern pigeons and chickens, the dodo probably had a crop or gizzard. That means it swallowed small stones or pebbles that helped grind hard food such as seeds, grains or tough plant material. Its sharply curved beak may have helped it tear pieces from large fruits that it held on the ground with its strong claws.

According to Delphine Angst’s 2017 study, the breeding season of dodos began around August after a possible fattening phase with ovulation in females. It is assumed that after hatching, chicks quickly grew to almost adult body size and reached sexual maturity fairly soon. Moulting probably began in March, with the wing and tail feathers being replaced first. The moult would therefore have been completed by the end of July, in time for the next breeding season. These findings fit observations of modern birds on Mauritius and are supported by historical descriptions.

Little is also known about the vocalisations of dodos. A witness in 1638 noted that the bird quacked like a goose. A Dutch sailor reported in 1662:

“When we held one by the leg, it let out a cry; others ran over to help the captive and were also caught.”

The Song of the Dodo. 2001. p. 346. D. Quammen

A distress call is of course not to be confused with the natural call of the species. In Extinct Birds (2000), Erol Fuller puts forward the plausible theory that the word “dodo”—probably coined by Portuguese sailors—represents a phonetic imitation of the bird’s call . According to this, the dodo’s call could have consisted of two notes that formed a pigeon-like sequence of sounds and sounded something like “doo-doo”.

Not a delicacy, but still hunted

Mauritius in its original state was an island without land mammals and humans—there were no rodents, carnivores or omnivores. Some large reptiles, such as the Mauritius giant skink, were present, but posed no threat to a 20-kilogram bird. The dodo thus had no natural enemies and developed neither flight nor defence behaviour. Its evolutionarily determined flightlessness was also no problem. Because the bird lived on an island without predators, it showed no fear of the suddenly appearing sailors—a phenomenon known as island tameness or ecological naivety—and thus became easy prey.

Whenever European sailors stopped on Mauritius in the 16th or 17th century, they killed dodos to obtain fresh meat for their often hungry crews on long journeys through the Indian Ocean. Various reports indicate that the meat of dodos was well suited as provisions for long sea voyages. It is also reported that sailors ate the bird’s eggs in large quantities.

Nevertheless, the dodo does not seem to have been a culinary delicacy. Van Neck’s report from 1598 states: “We call them Walckvögel, because they become more and more inedible the longer you cook them.” The Dutch term “Walckvogel” can be translated as “disgusting”, “tasteless” or “sickly bird”. Although dodo meat was tough, sailors who landed on Mauritius had no choice but to eat it.

Several years after van Neck’s expedition, at the beginning of the 17th century, another ship reached Mauritius. The captain’s log contains records attesting that dodos were killed in large numbers . A group sent out to search for food returned to the ship with several fat dodos. “Three or four of them [made] a plentiful meal for the whole crew” and “a good portion” was left over. Ten days later, the group brought 24 of these birds; “everything that remained was salted”. In a later hunt, they captured “during the three days they were away, another half hundred birds, including about 20 dodos, all of which they brought on board and pickled”.

The dodo was not the only animal on Mauritius that stood out for its ecological naivety. Many native animals, including flying birds, tortoises and other wildlife, showed unusual tameness. A travel report from 1611 that pays special attention to the dodo describes it as follows:

“In colour they are grey; people call them Totersten or Walckvögel; they are there in great numbers, so that the Dutch caught and ate many every day. For not only these, but in general all birds are so tame that they beat turtle doves as well as other doves and parrots with sticks and caught them with their bare hands. They also seized the Totersten or Walckvögel with their hands, but had to be careful that these birds did not bite them in the arms or legs with their beaks, which are very strong, thick and curved; for they usually bite extremely hard.”

The Song of the Dodo. 2001. p. 354. D. Quammen

The lack of fear of humans, for which there was no evolutionary necessity in Mauritius’ isolated island world, left endemic animals defenceless against the new threats that arrived on the island with European settlers. This naivety led not only to the extinction of the dodo, but also of many other species, such as the saddle-backed giant Mauritius tortoise, the red rail, the Mauritius sheldgoose, or the Mascarene coot, which were also exterminated in the 16th or 17th century.

The real reason the dodo went extinct

Findings from Young and Gostling’s 2024 study show that the dodo lived on Mauritius for about 25 million years without threat—until rats and cats from the ships of European sailors arrived on the island.

It is therefore unlikely that eating this pigeon alone led to its extinction. Humans were nevertheless responsible because they brought invasive species such as rats, feral domestic animals, monkeys and pigs onto the island. These animals posed a significant threat to the dodo, which previously had no natural enemies on Mauritius. They destroyed the bird’s ground nests and ate its eggs.

Because of its flightlessness, the dodo was forced to build its nest on the ground. Historical sources report that during the breeding season, dodos laid only a single white egg about the size of a pear . If this is correct, the small number of eggs per clutch was particularly problematic for the species. This low reproductive rate made the dodo extremely vulnerable to losses, especially from invasive species that threatened its few offspring. This would have had devastating effects on the population and the long-term survival of the species.

For Quammen, it was above all the pigs, which multiplied uncontrollably on the island, that posed the greatest threat to dodos. As omnivores, they were not dependent on specific food sources, which led to unchecked population growth. Reports from the late 17th century show, for example, that pigs severely impaired the reproduction of land and sea turtles by eating their eggs.

Quammen also considers the monkeys that reached Mauritius for unknown reasons in the 16th century to be a serious major danger to the dodo. Historical records from 1709, when the dodo had long been extinct, report that a traveller claimed to have seen about 4,000 monkeys on the island. The monkeys—in particular the crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis)—are also omnivores that make life, and reproduction, difficult especially for ground-nesting birds.

In 2006, a research team led by Kenneth Rijsdijk discovered a mass grave with dodo bones, other animal bones and plant seeds on Mauritius, according to a BBC report. Experts interpreted this find as a possible further indication related to the dodo’s extinction. It could point to a natural disaster—possibly a cyclone or a sudden rise in sea level—which may have wiped out a large part of the dodo population even before humans arrived.

The dodo and its extinct sister species, the Rodrigues solitaire, are iconic examples of the devastating consequences of human impact on nature. These originally flight-capable pigeon species presumably went extinct within a century of their first contact with humans.

When did the dodo go extinct?

It took until the 19th century for the dodo’s extinction to be recognised, although sailors and naturalists had already reported the birds’ rarity in the 17th century and the French found no dodos when Mauritius was resettled in 1721. This was partly because, for religious reasons, the extinction of species was considered impossible, since the concept was not compatible with the contemporary understanding of creation. It was not until George Cuvier, a French naturalist and palaeontologist of the late 18th and early 19th century, that this view was refuted. Through his work with fossils, he recognised that certain species found in geological layers no longer appeared in later layers. He concluded that these species must have gone extinct.

In 1833, the dodo was presented in the Penny Magazine, a British journal that made education and knowledge accessible to a broad audience, as an exemplary case of human-caused extinction. This depiction—revolutionary at the time—played a major role in bringing the concept of extinction caused by human intervention into public and scientific debate. The article in the Penny Magazine cemented the image of the dodo as an iconic symbol of the extinction of species and sensitised society to the impact of human activities on the environment.

The exact extinction date of the dodo remains uncertain. Many consider the last credible report from 1690—when the Englishman Benjamin Harry reported a dodo on Mauritius—to mark the end of the species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN also assumes that the species no longer existed after 1690. It is, however, considered almost certain that the dodo had disappeared by 1693 at the latest. In that year, the French explorer François Leguat reached Mauritius, and dodos no longer appeared in his list of animals found on the island.

Some experts regard an eyewitness report from 1662 as the last certain sign of life of a dodo. In that year, the Dutchman Volquard Iversen (Volkert Evertsen) was shipwrecked on the island of Mauritius after his ship sank. Iversen and his men found the island uninhabited and searched for food. They no longer encountered dodos on Mauritius itself, but did discover some of these birds on a small offshore islet that could easily be reached on foot at low tide. Iversen’s report says:

“Among other birds, there were also those called ‘doddaersen’ by the people in the Indian colonies; they were larger than geese but could not fly. Instead of wings they had small wing flaps; they could, however, run very fast.”

The Song of the Dodo. 2001. p. 362. D. Quammen

Beyond the interesting note that dodos were fast runners, Iversen’s account of dodos on a small islet is ecologically quite plausible. The last remaining dodos probably retreated to the islet to protect themselves from introduced animal species that preyed on them and their eggs. Unfortunately, the Dutch killed some of these dodos, which may have been the last of their kind. After only five days, Iversen and his men were rescued by a passing ship.

The British ornithologist Anthony S. Cheke, an expert on the birdlife of the Mascarene Islands, has examined the historical reports in detail. He concluded that the last credible records of living dodos date from 1662, when the Dutchman Volquard Iversen mentioned them. Cheke suspects that later sightings probably mistakenly referred to the likewise flightless red rail (Aphanapteryx bonasia), which went extinct around 1700.

The British palaeornithologist Julian P. Hume points out in Extinct Birds (2017) that historical reports repeatedly contain references to dodos up to the 1640s, but mentions of these birds disappear in the following two decades. In his view, Iversen’s 1662 account does not necessarily describe an actual encounter with dodos, especially since it remains unclear which small island it might have been. In this context, Hume emphasises that it was quite common at the time to copy travel reports—especially van Neck’s—which makes it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction.

Were there more than one dodo species?

Some older sources, such as Igor Akimuschkin’s book Vom Aussterben bedroht? (1972), claim that there were three different dodo species living on the Mascarene Islands—Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues. In addition to the classic dodo, the Rodrigues solitaire and the Réunion solitaire (Ornithaptera solitaria) or white dodo (Raphus solitarius) are named there.

However, in 2002 a research team at Oxford University led by the American biologist Beth Shapiro found in a DNA analysis that the dodo is only closely related to the extinct Rodrigues solitaire and the still extant, flight-capable Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica), which mostly forages on the ground.

The so-called white dodo mentioned in earlier reports never existed, according to the latest findings. Scientists suspect that it was probably the also extinct Réunion ibis, which was native to the island of Réunion. This also explains why no fossil remains of a dodo have been found on Réunion to this day.

Over the centuries, numerous dodo species were described, which led to great confusion because it was not clear which species actually existed. Records of these alleged species are often contradictory, imprecise and unreliable. In their study published in 2024, the researchers Young and Gostling compiled a comprehensive historical overview of the nomenclature of the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire. They examined old specimens, reports of living dodos and early taxonomic descriptions in order to separate fact from fiction. They found that many of the described species were fictitious, such as the Nazarene dodo (Didus nazarenus). The Rodrigues solitaire, on the other hand, long considered mythological, did in fact exist and lived on the neighbouring island of Rodrigues.

The small amount of preserved material in natural history collections meant that 18th- and early 19th-century naturalists often based the scientific names for dodo species on reports written before the species went extinct. As a result, no type specimens were designated for the dodo or the solitaire.

How the dodo became a pigeon

Until the mid-19th century, no fossil remains of the dodo had been discovered, which led some experts around 1800 to doubt its existence. This happened despite the fact that a head and a foot in Oxford, another foot in London, and skulls in Prague and Copenhagen had been preserved from live-caught birds. Many nevertheless considered the dodo a mythological creature.

The British naturalists John S. Duncan (1828) and William J. Broderip (1837) were among the first to compile all available information about the dodo to prove that it was a real species and not a mythological figure. The first comprehensive dodo monograph The Dodo and its Kindred, published by Hugh E. Strickland and Alexander G. Melville in 1848, aimed to separate myth from reality. In this work, the anatomist Melville describes the physical remains of the dodo and compares the bird with the then-known remains of the Rodrigues solitaire.

The authors obtained permission to dissect the head of the Oxford dodo, which ultimately confirmed that the bird was a giant ground-dwelling pigeon. Comparison with the solitaire showed that the two birds were not identical, but shared many characteristic features of the leg bones that are known only in pigeons. As early as 1842, the Danish zoologist Johannes Theodor Reinhardt had put forward the controversial theory—after examining a dodo skull—that the dodo belonged to the pigeon family. At first this view was mocked, because previously scientists had speculated whether the dodo was a small ostrich, a rail, an albatross or even a vulture.

The monograph by Strickland and Melville aroused great public and scientific interest in the bird and triggered a race to discover the first dodo fossils.

First fossil finds and the dispute that followed

In 1865, Harry Higginson, who worked on the Mauritius railway for the government, accidentally came across workers digging up bones in a swampy area called Mare aux Songes. He recalls this moment in his Reminiscences of Life and Travel 1859-1872:

“Shortly before the completion of the railway I was walking along the embankment one morning, when I noticed some [workers] removing some peat soil from a small morass. They were separating and placing into heaps, a number of bones, of various sorts, among the debris. I stopped and examined them, as they appeared to belong to birds and reptiles, and we had always been on the lookout for bones of the then mythical Dodo. So I filled my pocket with the most promising ones for further examination.”

Reminiscences of Life and Travel 1859-1872. 1891. H. Higginson

Higginson brought the bones to George Clark, who was also on Mauritius and owned “Professor Owen’s book about the dodo”, to compare the finds with the illustrations in the book. It turned out that many of the bones undoubtedly came from the dodo. Clark was then commissioned to lead the search for more bone material in Mare aux Songes in the southwest of Mauritius. Higginson continues:

“I sent a box full to the Liverpool, York, and Leeds Museums, from which, in the former, a complete skeleton was erected. This is the only spot in the world where these bones have been found; and all that are now to be seen in various collections, came out of the same bog, only 200 feet in diameter.”

Reminiscences of Life and Travel 1859-1872. 1891. H. Higginson

The discovery of the first fossil dodo remains in the Mare aux Songes swamp led to an intense effort to scientifically document the bird’s postcranial anatomy, as described in How Oven ‘stole’ the Dodo (2009) by Hume and Cheke.

George Clark, who probably discovered the site, initially sent bone samples to Richard Owen, a renowned comparative anatomist at the British Museum. Later, he sent more material via Edward Newton, who was stationed on Mauritius, to Newton’s brother, the zoologist Alfred Newton in Cambridge. After Owen received the first shipment, however, he intercepted the material intended for Alfred Newton and used his position to pre-empt complaints from the Newtons.

Owen then became the first to publish his results and highlighted the significance of his discoveries in public lectures and exhibitions. At the same time, he ensured that Clark was financially rewarded to secure his support. This approach led to considerable tension, especially with the Newton brothers, who felt sidelined. Added to this were Clark’s disputes with Higginson, who also claimed the site. Clark tried to conceal the abundance of dodo bones to keep prices for the valuable fossils high, which led to further conflict.

This rivalry between Owen and the Newton brothers, fuelled by academic jealousy and the struggle for scientific recognition, ended in a lasting feud. Owen nevertheless went on to formally describe the dodo’s skeletal anatomy in his works Memoir on the Dodo (Didus ineptus) (1866) and On the Dodo (Part II) (1872), without appropriately acknowledging Clark and the Newtons.

Other important finds

At the beginning of the 20th century, the collector Etienne Thirioux discovered an almost complete dodo skeleton, probably in a valley cave on the slopes of Le Pouce, the third-highest mountain on Mauritius. In 2006, during a survey of Mauritian caves for cockroaches, another dodo skeleton—known as “Dodo Fred”—was discovered by chance. This skeleton was named after the caver who found the bones and comes from a lava cave in the highlands of Mauritius. It is the second discovered dodo skeleton that can clearly be attributed to a single individual. According to Julian Hume, the discovery of these two almost complete skeletons suggests that dodos were distributed both in the central mountains and in the lowland and coastal regions of the island.

In The Discovery of a Dodo in a Highland Mauritian Cave (2016), the caver Gregory J. Middleton and Julian Hume describe the circumstances of the discovery of Dodo Fred. This discovery was initially celebrated as a major scientific breakthrough, as it is the best preserved and most complete known dodo skeleton from a single individual. Particularly remarkable is that Dodo Fred was found in its original death position. Its body apparently slipped into a small rock crevice, leaving part of the beak and one foot visible on the surface.

Most other dodo bones were found in the swampy Mare aux Songes, where the hot, humid and acidic environment severely impaired DNA preservation. Scientists hoped that the cave environment might offer better conditions for DNA conservation, since the bones there were not exposed to sunlight and the temperature remained relatively constant. Unfortunately, later examinations showed that the skeleton contained no surviving collagen, indicating that the DNA has also been lost. Despite this setback, the find of Dodo Fred remains scientifically significant, as it extends the known habitat of dodos to the cooler, wetter highland regions of Mauritius and has rekindled interest in this iconic species.

Worldwide, 26 museums hold significant collections of dodo remains, almost all of which come from the Mare aux Songes swamp. Some of these museums, including the Natural History Museum in London, the American Museum of Natural History, the Zoological Museum of the University of Cambridge and the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main, hold near-complete skeletons assembled from the scattered subfossil remains of several dodos. In 2011, during preparations for a move, a wooden box was rediscovered at University College London’s Grant Museum containing dodo bones from the Edwardian era (1901–1910) that had previously been stored together with crocodile bones.

Can the dodo be cloned?

On 31 January 2023 scientists at Colossal Biosciences announced that they wanted to bring back the dodo using modern genetic engineering. Previously, the startup had already announced plans to clone the mammoth and the thylacine.

The researchers draw on Beth Shapiro’s 2002 work, in which it was possible to reconstruct the dodo’s mitochondrial DNA. However, since this genetic material is highly degraded after centuries, it is not sufficient on its own to clone the bird. Instead, the scientists plan to modify the genome of the closely related Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) so that a bird emerges that is very similar to the dodo. The genetically modified material would then be inserted into an egg cell of the Nicobar pigeon, and in the best case a viable offspring would develop.

In September 2025 Colossal reported that it had moved closer to its goal: its in-house Avian Genetics Group had succeeded for the first time in maintaining primordial pigeon germ cells long-term in culture. These cells—precursors of sperm and egg cells—are considered key to permanently introducing genetic changes into the germline. Based on the reconstructed dodo genome, CRISPR is now to be used to selectively edit those genes that influenced the dodo’s body structure and external traits. The modified germ cells are then transferred into chicken eggs, which serve as surrogate mothers. According to Colossal, the first such birds have already reached sexual maturity and begun laying eggs. This clears the way for further breeding cycles in which the proportion of dodo traits is to be increased step by step—until, “in five to seven years”, animals could emerge that are very close to the dodo in appearance and genetically.

However, reviving an extinct species is not only technically challenging, but also raises further problems: one of the biggest challenges is that there are no living dodos left that could teach the cloned offspring the necessary social behaviour. In addition, the cloned bird would have to return to an environment that has changed significantly since the 17th century. Today’s ecosystems on Mauritius differ greatly from those in which the dodo once lived, which could significantly reduce the survival chances of such an animal in the wild.

Although it has not yet been possible to successfully clone birds, the efforts of Colossal Biosciences have already led to the development of new tools in avian genomics . These could potentially be used to save endangered species by increasing the genetic diversity of small populations. Given these possibilities, the question arises whether it would not be more sensible to invest these resources in protecting threatened species instead of creating a “dodo clone” that would ultimately only be an approximation of the original bird.