Researchers studied the dodo bird in hopes of gaining insight into its mysterious life.
The dodo was alive during recorded human history, but very little is known about its behavior, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology reported. To learn more about how the bird lived researchers looked at the only complete skeleton 3-D laser scanning technology.
"The 3-D laser surface scans we made of the fragile Thirioux dodo skeletons enable us to reconstruct how the dodo walked, moved and lived to a level of detail that has never been possible before. There are so many outstanding questions about the dodo bird that we can answer with this new knowledge," said Leon Claessens, associate professor at the College of the Holy Cross, and lead researcher on the study.
The skeleton was discovered by amateur collector Etienne Thirioux on the island of Mauritius between 1899 and 1917, but was never studied. The find is still to this day the only complete dodo skeleton known to science.
"Being able to examine the skeleton of a single, individual dodo, which is not made up from as many individual birds as there are bones, as is the case in all those other composite skeletons, truly allows us to appreciate the way the dodo looked and see how tall or rotund it really was," said Juilan Hume, of the Natural History Museum UK, a co-author on the study.
The researchers studied the skeleton using the newest digital tools, providing clues as to how the dodo evolved its large size.
"The skull of the dodo is so large and its beak so robust, that it is easy to understand that the earliest naturalists thought it was related to vultures and other birds of prey, rather than the pigeon family," said study author Kenneth Rijsdijk of the University of Amsterdam's Instutute for Biodiversity.
The fact that the bird was close to the size of the Rodrigues solitaire (which used its wings in combat), but lacked a keel on the sternum, suggests it exhibited less intraspecific antagonistic behavior.
"The history of the dodo provides an important case study of the effects of human disturbance of the ecosystem, from which there is still much to learn that can inform modern conservation efforts for today's endangered animals," Claessens said.
The study was presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
