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The first positive assertion one came across of the despatch of a Dodo to Europe is to be found in the two letters addressed by Emmanuel Altham to his brother on
the 18th June 1628, describing the bird he was sending as a most extraordinary creature. But there is no proof that the Dodo ever reached its destination. On the other hand, in 1634, Thomas Crossfield of Queen's
College, Oxford, had made an entry in his diary to the effect that one Mr. Gossling had offered a Dodo to the school of Anatomy.
Four years later, in 1638, Sir Hannon Lestrange stopped in the streets of London
in front of a huge painted signboard depicting a fantastic fowl. On entering the establishment, he was brought before a big bird, larger than a turkey, with legs and claws fairly similar to that of fowl's, though
somewhat shorter and stronger. The keeper called it a Dodo, and invited onlookers to feed it with pebbles about the size of a nutmeg! These are the only live specimens of which positive mention has ever been made.
To them may also be added Emperor's Rodolf's bird. In September 1865, Mr. Gaston de Bissy, a planter on Mauritius, directed his employees to dig up a marsh on his estate, MARE AUX SONGES, for the purpose of using
the mould as a fertilizer. Mr. George Clark who was thoroughly versed in natural sciences and two labourers, ventured about three feet deep in the blackish water, where with their feet they searched the mud
carefully. After several futile attempts, three bones of a large Dodo were brought up - a whole tibia, part of another, and a broken tarsus.
This most valuable discovery led Mr. Clark to persevere, and in a comparatively short time, he had assembled all the bones, with the exception of the digits and some vertebrae,
to form a complete skeleton. Sir Robert Owen offered to prepare this skeleton himself, after Clark had sent the bones to the British Museum. The skeleton was accordingly constructed, and all zoologists were
compelled to accept unreservedly the opinion of Mr. Reinhardt of Copenhagen, supported by Mr. H.E.Strickland and Mr. A. G. Melville and Sir Robert Owen himself, that the Dodo, was nothing but a gigantic,
brevipennate, and frugivorous pigeon. Later still, in 1889, Mr. Théodore Sauzier, a Mauritian residing in Paris, visited his native island and obtained assistance from the colonial government to make further
researches in Mare aux Songes, which resulted in the discovery of a considerable number of bones of Dodos. A few specimens were sent by Mr. Sauzier to Sir Edward Newton, formerly Colonial Secretary of Mauritius
(brother of Mr. Alfred Newton, the distinguished zoologist), who had taken much interest in Mr. Clark's investigations. An entire skeleton constructed by Mr. A. Milne Edwards of Paris, was presented to Mauritius's
Museum by Mr Sauzier, who accompanied it with a copy of Mr. Roelandt Savery's Berlin picture of the Dodo.
Searches for the Dodo and everything about it, are still being privately continued throughout Mauritius, and especially in the environs of Le Pouce Mountain, Anse Courtois,
Vallée des Prêtres and Corps de Garde Mountain.
A few years ago in 1989, much work has been accomplished by scientists in various parts of the world. It
is a fact that DNA science could bring the Dodo back to life. In the Sunday Times of 21 March 1999, Steve Farrar, the science correspondent, wrote the following: Scientists are to extract DNA from a dodo
for the first time, raising the prospect that the animal whose name is synonymous with extinction could be resurrected. British experts will recover fragments of genetic material from a preserved head and foot
kept in Oxford University's Museum of Natural History. The research will identify the closest living relative and may pave the way to the recreation of the species. Ecologists, however, have warned that
bringing back an animal resembling the dodo might persuade the public that there is no longer any need to protect endangered species, as any creatures wiped out by man could be recreated.
A team of Oxford University experts, led by Dr Alan Cooper, has already started to build the dodo's family tree by testing the DNA of African and Indian Ocean pigeons, to which it is thought to be related.
While genetic material from the extinct bird has probably deteriorated into millions of fragments, Cooper is confident that modern methods will reveal enough to allow it to be compared with living species. This
will show the experts where it fits into the family tree.
"If we can find out what the dodo's closest living relative is, it is going to tell us a lot about where the
dodo came from and how it evolved," said Cooper. Likely candidates include the Victoria crown pigeon from New Guinea and the saw-billed pigeon, both very large birds that spend their lives on the ground
and rarely fly. It could then be possible to work out the dodo's unique genes, said Dr Charlie Shaw, an expert in ancient DNA at Durham University.
Once scientists have worked out the key genes that made the dodo unique, they could then create
genetically engineered DNA to put into the nucleus of an egg and hatch a dodo-like bird using one of the pigeons identified by Cooper's survey. It would, however, be almost impossible to recreate a perfect
dodo, because its genetic code, which survives only in tiny fragments, could never be worked out to a sufficiently high degree of accuracy, said Dr Ken Joysey, a palaeontologist at Cambridge University.
"You only need to get a little bit wrong to get a non-viable animal - a single mistake could be lethal," he
said. An alternative might be to use selective breeding to create a bird resembling a dodo. This would involve taking its closest living relatives, inter-breeding them and selecting the young that most
exhibited the traits of a dodo.
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