![]() ![]() From there, they cross-reference the interior of the skull with the interior of skulls from other birds to deduce what parts of the brain dodos used the most. In recent years, scientists have used a wide range of scanning techniques like MRIs (magnetic resonance imagery) and CT scans (computed tomography) to scan the inside of the few dodo skulls still floating around. ![]() I guess when it comes to preservation, we’re better at saving the things we make than the things we destroy. You know, stuff scribbled on frail parchment that survived for 400 years. Interestingly enough, drawings are the best-preserved remnants of the dodo. The few fossils that remain are primitively preserved heads and feet, a couple of leg bones and plaster skeletons that are recreations of recreations. Preservation wasn’t as careful then as it is now, and scientists at the time didn’t have things like climate controlled clean rooms. It’s just like that song in “The Lion King”, if it were rated R and Mufasa decided to feast on Rafiki’s bones for holding his cub over a freaking cliff.īrenden Bobby: professional childhood ruiner.Īs science wasn’t exactly in its peak in the 1600s, not much remains of the dodo. ![]() Now I’m not saying light a tire on fire and throw a garbage bag full of six-pack rings in the ocean, but evolution has proven that some species will thrive and others will die. Unfortunately, its extinction was an inevitability even if it had survived into our conservationist 21st century. As humans moved in around the 1600s, bringing pigs and other large mammals, the dodo had a hard time competing with more efficient animals. It was a rare bird by nature, living on a relatively isolated island in the tropics with few natural predators. While you might expect an extinction shaming and a climate lecture, climate change as we know it had very little to do with the dodo extinction. It makes them travel faster, escape predators and intercept prey more readily, but who needs to burn all of their energy on flying when most of your food falls on the ground? If I were stranded on an island where tacos fell out of the trees, I’d probably look ready to engage in a sumo throwdown, too. An evolutionary history on islands with no predators probably helped establish its … aherm, portly appearance.įlight is an important ability for birds. They were about three feet tall, fat and flightless. The dodo was a bird closely related to pigeons and doves, though you wouldn’t think it if you ever saw one. ![]()
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