9/2/2023 0 Comments Dodo bird found alive 2017Actually they describe the dodo in different states of moulting.” said Angst. “It was usually believed that the descriptions are different because they were wrong. That could help explain why contemporary descriptions of dodos differed significantly. The researchers believe that differing historical descriptions of the dodo are not contradictory or wrong, but describe the birds at different phases of the moulting cycle. “It is exactly what we see for the dodo – for these specimens we can say that they died when they were actually moulting,” said Angst. When birds moult they use calcium from the inside layers of their bones to build new feathers, leaving telltale holes in the internal bone walls – a feature, the authors note, seen in the bones of birds ranging from penguins to pigeons. The study also shed light on the birds’ plumage. “In our samples we found several specimens with this specific kind of central bone and then we for sure that this specimen is a female and it is a female during ovulation, which is quite cool,” said Angst, adding that for the other bones, without the extra tissue, it was unclear to which sex they belonged. Female birds, notes Angst, lay down a special type of tissue inside their bones when they ovulate, with the tissue providing a supply of calcium for egg production. “For the first time we can say that for sure these specimens are juvenile, even if it looks like it is almost an adult in terms of size,” said Angst, adding that the results showed that the chicks grew rapidly after hatching.Īnd there’s more. “As soon as they achieve sexual maturity bone tissue very slowly – and we can see that in the cross-sections,” said Angst. However, previous research in modern birds has shown that the outermost tissue is only found in adults. 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.
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