• Question: How did we know of the Dodo bird if its extinct besides the fossil?

    Asked by anon-224642 to Simon, Selen, Paul, Nawapat, Natalie, Katy on 14 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Simon Brown

      Simon Brown answered on 14 Nov 2019:

      The Dodo died out quite recently in 1681. There have been drawings and paintings of the flightless bird so science knows exactly what it looked like.

    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 14 Nov 2019:

      There is also a skeleton of one in the British Museum in London

    • Photo: Katy Bruce

      Katy Bruce answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      I’m not entirely sure on this one but I would assume it’s a combination of stories, written accounts, paintings and word of mouth handed down through the generations. It was a pretty significant historical event for humans to have caused the extinction of an entire species so it would have been quite a talking point, and still is!! I must admit I didn’t know about the skeleton in the British Museum so that is now definitely on my to-do list! Thanks Paul!

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