![]() ![]() It became a bigger bird, with a bigger beak perfect for picking seeds, fruits, bulbs and roots. The dodo’s ancestor lost the ability to fly, and became adapted to live on the forest floor. Once here, the bird was in an untouched environment. The rather stunning Nicobar Pigeon, with incredible irridescent plumage. The ancestors of the dodo, and the Nicobar Pigeon, likely ‘island hopped’ (or flew from island to island) eventually ending up on Mauritius. Genetic analysis has shown that the closest living relative to the dodo is the rather handsome Nicobar Pigeon ( Caloenas nicobarica). What began as a bleak black igneous rock protruding out of the sea slowly began to change to a vibrant green, full of life. Seeds and mini-beasts were blown in the wind, some reptiles washed ashore on logs after storms, and birds, flew off track all ending up on this islands. Just east of Madagascar, the small island of Mauritius was born. Sometime around 10 million years ago, the hot spot erupted once more, slowly forming the Mascarene Islands. In this time the continents had moved a lot, and the hot spot now lay waiting under the African Plate. It erupted again around 40 million years ago, and lay there quietly beneath the surface for the next 30 million years or so. As the continental plates moved, the magma hot spot stayed put. This gigantic underground magma aquifer didn’t stop there. Like layers of crusty, dried blood, the Deccan Traps in India are evidence of this massive eruption. Several eruptions spewed out enough lava to completely cover Britain. And it did so for tens of thousands of years. An enormous bubble of hot magma rose from the belly of the Earth, and erupted. The story of the dodo ( Raphus cucullatus) begins not when they were first discovered, but way back to when Tyrannosaurs rex stalked the land. It shouldn’t be hard to change how something is labelled, should it? I want to try. And illustrations of dodos do look wonderful, with their oversized bodies and large beak. The very name is associated with stupidity. This iconic bird is the epitome of extinction. (One I wasn’t aware of was the insult ‘you dodo’ which is used when calling someone stupid.) The birds even appeared in the wonderful animated Ice Age film, where they are not the brightest creatures, spectacularly falling to their deaths (and one makes a cameo appearance in Ice Age 2). We have all heard the phrases ‘as dead as a dodo’ or ‘going the way of the dodo’. The common name of this beautiful bird is firmly rooted into our language in a negative way. Wonderful painting of “Edwards’ Dodo” by Roelant Savery, 1626. And it’s squawk echoing through the empty forest as it calls for a mate. Perhaps a little ruffle of its feathers before it shuffles down to sleep. ![]() It’s long, flat scale covered toes gently crunching down on top of dead leaves as it plods through the forest looking for fruits to eat. For if a species is to vanish, there will always be just one left at the very end. A unique organism, a unique result of 4 billion years of evolution, lost.įor me, the saddest thing about extinction is the thought of that last individual. ![]() When an animal or plant is gone, it is gone. Each of the thousands of millions of species that have lived on this planet have been perfectly suited to their environment. A species isn’t more advanced or special because it survived an extinction event. For that to happen, stronger factors play a part climatic changes, continental drift, even volcanic eruptions on a small island can wipe out whole ecosystems. Rarely such circumstances alone lead to a loss of an entire species. Yet they do.Īn animal’s daily life is a struggle for survival: find the next meal, avoid being eaten. ![]() Species have no idea if they will vanish from the face of the Earth forever. ![]()
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