Letter From Mauritius
Digging for Dodos
Hunting an extinct bird.
by Ian Parker January 22, 2007
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ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM MAURITIUS about the 2006 Mauritius Dodo Expedition… Tells about Julian Hume, a British paleontologist, and one of the world’s leading authorities on the dodo. In his spare time, he makes paintings of dodos and other extinct bird species. Hume had come to Mauritius to participate in the Expedition, a search by a group of international scientists for dodo remains in a field on the edge of a sugar estate… Dutch ships first arrived on the island in 1598. Mauritius was then inhabited, with at least 25 endemic bird species, including the dodo. Only eight survive… Tells about research by Oxford’s Beth Shapiro, who analyzed DNA extracted from dodo remains, which found that the dodo is much older than Mauritius itself, which was created, by volcanic activity, 8 million years ago. The theory is that the island was colonized by a flighted version of the bird… On his way to Mauritius, the writer stops in Oxford to view portions of a dodo skull held by the university. By the nineteenth century, this was the only surviving sample of the bird in the world. The Oxford dodo was the inspiration for the bird in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” An almost complete skeleton was found on the island of Mauritius at the end of the nineteenth century. The area where it was found was called Mare aux Songes, which was on land owned by Mon Tresor & Mon Desert, which operates three sugar estates on the island. In 2002, Alan Grihault, author of “Dodo: The Bird Behind the Legend,” petitioned the M.T.M.D. board about developing the site as a tourist attraction. In 2005, Grihault brought two Dutch scientists, Kenneth Rijsdijk and Frans Bunnik, to the island to take a soil sample from the Mare aux Songes site. In their sample they found a dodo bone… Writer visits Christian Foo Kune, the general manager of M.T.M.D. Foo Kune discussed plans to develop the site into a resort. The first Dodo Expedition was created to explore the site. In two days, nearly a thousand bones were found, but there were complaints that the Mauritians had been left out of the Expedition. The 2006 Expedition returned with the appropriate permits and with a Mauritian scientist as part of the team. After two weeks, they collected close to 4,000 bones. It became clear that the team was finding material from a fairly narrow historical range-perhaps 4,000 years ago. Tells about a visit to the site by Georges Leung Shing, the managing director of M.T.M.D. Leung Shing asked Beth Shapiro whether the material could be used to clone a dodo. “Dodoland?” Shapiro said, smiling. “It’s not going to happen.”
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Digging for Dodos at Omnicane Mauritius
via newyorker.com
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