The results reveal that, like the majority of modern birds, dodo bones have three layers of tissue. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Angst and colleagues from the Natural History Museum in London and Tring describe how they examined under a microscope thin cross-sections of 22 leg and wing bones, thought to be from 22 different dodos. Photograph: The Natural History Museum, Lond Thomas Herbert, who visited Mauritius in the mid-17th century, described the dodo as having eyes like diamonds. Now researchers have managed to fill in some of the gaps. Native to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the dodo was wiped out in the 17th century after the arrival of Dutch sailors and the animals that came with them, with hunting, competition for food and habitat destruction all contributing to the bird’s demise.īut, despite contemporary records – including those from one Thomas Herbert who after dropping by Mauritius described the dodo in 1634 as having eyes like diamonds, “her clothing downy feathers, her train three small plumes, short and inproportionable” – little is known about the birds, with most records far from scientific.

“Before our study the only things we knew about the ecology of these birds was that they were a big pigeon about 10 kilos,” said Delphine Angst, a palaeontologist and first author of the research from the University of Cape Town. The dodo’s annual cycle, including moulting, egg laying and a period of arrested growth during the summer months, when cyclones and poor weather are common in Mauritius.

Dodo bird ice age