Fantastic use of a laser scanner to image a complete Dodo skeleton. This sort of research will open up all sorts of avenues and really help us to understand the evolution and lifestyle of this iconic victim. With a computerised skeleton it should now be possible to use techniques like Finite Element Analysis to evaluate how strong the bones are. From this it will be possible to work out what a Dodo could do. Such as how fast could it run? How would it have fed?
In fact, the Dodo, which went extinct on the island of Mauritius 320 years ago, was a member of the pigeon family, one that found a niche on an island free of mammalian predators. What’s more, the story of the bird’s demise sheds much-needed light on the processes by which species are disappearing today.
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