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Posted on 03/01/2002 8:55:03 AM PST by Oxylus
Ancestors of the flightless figurehead of extinction island-hopped.
The flightless dodo's ungainly shape hid an island-hopping past, say researchers. DNA from the extinct bird has revealed its place in the pigeon family tree, and suggests how it came to end up on its home, and graveyard, the island of Mauritius.
The dodo's strange appearance led to centuries of wrangling over its ancestry. "It's the figurehead of extinction, yet little is known about its evolution," says zoologist Alan Cooper of the University of Oxford.
Cooper and his colleagues extracted DNA from museum specimens, including the one in Oxford that was the inspiration for the dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Poignantly, the dodo's closest relative is also extinct, the team found. The solitaire pigeon (Pezophaps solitaria ), which was also large and flightless, lived on Rodrigues Island, 550 kilometres northeast of Mauritius. It died out in about 1765, a century after the dodo (Raphus cucullatus).
These birds are descended from Asian pigeons. The common ancestor of both species began its passage across the Indian Ocean about 43 million years ago.
The proto-dodo probably used the Mascarene islands as stepping-stones, the researchers suggest. This chain of volcanic islands also began to appear about 43 million years ago, stretching south from the Asian mainland. Many of the Mascarenes have now sunk back beneath the waves.
Mauritius and Rodrigues are youthful outposts of the group: Mauritius is about 7 million years old, Rodrigues a mere 1.5 million. Cooper speculates that the solitaire and dodo reached their new homes by air, later evolving flightlessness independently. "Rodrigues is far off over some deep ocean," he says. "It'd be a lot easier to fly there." References
* Shapiro, B. Flight of the dodo. Science, 295, 1683, (2002).
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002
Have you ever seen movies from below of ducks paddling? Have you ever seen a duck try to take off? It is not pretty! If ducks are good underwater swimmers, well, then good for them. (Actually, I have seen ducks duck underwater & pop up a full minute later, 200 ft. away. To me that's impressive. They're also good at sounding funny :-)
Dead Dodo Shows Signs of Life
Fri Mar 1, 8:17 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists at Oxford University said on Friday they had extracted DNA from a dodo, the famous flightless bird hunted to extinction on its native Indian Ocean island of Mauritius in the 17th century.
Cooper took the DNA from the head, leg and foot remains of a dodo donated to the university's Natural History Museum in 1683 -- just two years after the last dodo sighting.
Oxford's specimen, known as the "Alice in Wonderland" dodo because it is thought to have inspired Lewis Carroll's "Dodo" character, is the world's largest remains of the bird, which has achieved a near-mythological status.
Zoologist Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, keeper of Oxford's dodo remains, said the bird was the world's most recognized symbol of extinction, prompting the phrase "as dead as a dodo."
"It's a tragic figure," Nowak-Kemp told Reuters, referring to the bird's limited mobility. "It couldn't run, couldn't walk, couldn't defend itself from the pigs and rats introduced by the Dutch sailors...it's become like a child we should have protected."
The research aimed to uncover the dodo's family tree and discover its living relatives. The closest were a kind of pigeon from New Guinea and the Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.
But the DNA discovery (news - web sites), first published in Science magazine, is not enough to bring the bird back to life -- or pave the way for a Jurassic Park-type reincarnation.
"They had some difficulty in the sequencing because it is so fragmented," Nowak-Kemp said. "But...you can never say never."
Welcome to universe-worshiping doublespeak
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Note: this topic is from March 1, 2002. Thanks Oxylus."It's the figurehead of extinction, yet little is known about its evolution," says zoologist Alan Cooper of the University of Oxford. Cooper and his colleagues extracted DNA from museum specimens... the dodo's closest relative... [t]he solitaire pigeon (Pezophaps solitaria ), which was also large and flightless, lived on Rodrigues Island, 550 kilometres northeast of Mauritius... died out in about 1765, a century after the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). These birds are descended from Asian pigeons. The common ancestor of both species began its passage across the Indian Ocean about 43 million years ago. The proto-dodo probably used the Mascarene islands... chain of volcanic islands also began to appear about 43 million years ago, stretching south from the Asian mainland. Many of the Mascarenes have now sunk back beneath the waves. Mauritius and Rodrigues are youthful outposts of the group: Mauritius is about 7 million years old, Rodrigues a mere 1.5 million.Blast from the Past. |
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The proto-dodo
I love it.
“It’s a tragic figure,” Nowak-Kemp told Reuters, referring to the bird’s limited mobility. “It couldn’t run, couldn’t walk, couldn’t defend itself.
Sounds liks a democrat described by Bob Hope.
Thank you, good synopsis of a failed theory. They really need a new one.
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