Posted on 06/24/2006 6:32:32 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
Scientists say they have discovered part of the skeleton of a dodo, the large, flightless bird which became extinct more than 300 years ago.
One of the team in Mauritius said it was the first discovery of fully preserved bones which could give clues as to how the bird became extinct.
Last year, the team found a number of dodo bones at the site, but said the current find was more "significant".
The bird is thought to have been hunted to extinction by European settlers.
No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of bones was destroyed in a fire at a museum in Oxford, England, in 1755.
'Remarkable'
"It's a wonderful collection," said Dr Julian Hume, a research associate with London's Natural History Museum and a member of the largely Dutch-Mauritian team.
"The chances of a single (intact) bone being preserved [would be] a remarkable event; and here we have a whole collection of them," the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.
Dr Hume said previous bones had been plucked out in a haphazard way, with little attention given to adjacent dodo fossils or clues about the birds' environment.
"Before, all we had were (isolated) bones and evidence from early Dutch explorers," he said. "Now we have a context."
RAPHUS CUCULLATUS Dodo, BBC Forest-dwelling and flightless Waded in ponds to catch fish Killed by sailors for extra food Ship animals stole its eggs The find includes a complete hip and four leg bones for a single animal. Bones from numerous other dodos were also unearthed, such as skull parts, beak bones, vertebrae, wing bones and toe bones.
Dr Hume said the team also found bones of the giant Mauritius tortoise (Cylindraspis) which became extinct around the same time as the dodo, and hundreds of seeds of trees that no longer grow there.
The discoveries are part of an on-going project started last year when scientists unearthed hundreds of dodo bones at Mare aux Songes, a swampy area near a sugar plantation on the south-east of the island.
The bones, thought to be at least 2,000 years old, included sections of beaks and the remains of dodo chicks.
The project has a number of goals:
* A geophysical survey to identify the exact location of the fossil-bearing layers * Drilling wells to establish the composition and origin of the sediments containing the fossil-bearing layers * Excavation, sampling fossils and sediments for age-dating and fossil content * Taking DNA samples
Little is known about the dodo, a famous flightless bird thought to have become extinct in the 17th Century.
The dodo was mocked by Portuguese and Dutch colonialists for its size and apparent lack of fear of armed, hungry hunters.
Dodo excavation (Shapiro) The project aims to reconstruct the dodo ecosystem It took its name from the Portuguese word for "fool", and was hunted to extinction within 200 years of Europeans landing on Mauritius.
Mauritius was uninhabited when it was discovered by Portuguese sailors in 1598 and colonised by the Dutch.
The international multidisciplinary team assembled specially for the current expedition includes archaeologists, palaeontologists, and sedimentologists from 15 different institutes in various countries.
The project is being led by Dr Kenneth Rijsdijk of TNO B&O, Geological Survey of the Netherlands.
If they know they were hunted to extinction then how could this skeleton give them valuable clues "as tto the cause of extinction? Is there a stupid test a person must pass to become an archeologist? Score below a certain level in reasoning skills and you automatically get a degree?
Al Gore died? How sad!
At least they found him.
Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? ;')
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