The Dodo Blog

I saw some pictures of that wooden dodo on Flickr and I was curious to know where all those people were getting the dodos. I’m not sure about all, but MUJI was selling those dodos and the cute wooden animals toys on the session Toys and Children’s Gifts. Too bad I’m late, they are very pretty.

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From Cryptomundo: What Did A Dodo Look Like?

In line with a question during an earlier discussion about how might have the dodo really appeared, the famed artist and Hollywood special effects man Bill Munn [...] contacted me.

Munns wrote: “I have done scientific reconstructions of the Dodo (of how they may have looked) with all coloration based on actual descriptions and the head sculpted from a skull cast provided by the Harvard Museum of Natural History.”

The following reconstruction is what Bill Munns created of the dodo, and may be the closest thing we have to how a living dodo looked in the wild.

The following reconstruction is actually the picture you saw above. For a bit more about information about Munns visit his site.

Handmade Dodo by SandraHealy. That great dodo was available on her Etsy.

This bird from the island of Mauritius could not defend itself against humans and their animals, and died out by 1681. This carving is 8 x 8 x 2 cm (3 x 3 x 1 inch).

I use knives and chisels, not a power carver, to finish shaping the basswood. This technique gives crisper details. It is sanded smooth, and an airbrush used to apply water-based inks, with some details being burned In. It is finished with 3 coats of water-based urethane, and signed and dated on the bottom.

She shared her process of creation on her set How I create my animals. I think I don’t need to mention I specially loved the pictures with the dodo. Here are some images from her set: (more…)

Detail from Big Baby Tiger and Dodo, and Mini Baby Tiger and Dodo, both by Heather, aka littlecabbage on Flickr.

D is for Dodo by Derek Sullivan is part of his project Alphabet, which is also on Flickr.

An adorable purple dodo! D Dodo is a digital illustration for Matt Dawson’s personal project Animal Alphabet.

Dodo statue on The Gerald Durrel Zoo in Jersey, photo taken by Victor Keech.

Dodo Skeleton Found on Island, May Yield Extinct Bird’s DNA by Kate Ravilious for National Geographic News:

Adventurers exploring a cave on an island in the Indian Ocean have discovered the most complete and well-preserved dodo skeleton ever found, scientists reported yesterday.

Researchers say the find would likely yield the first useful samples of the extinct, flightless bird’s DNA.

If you follow this blog, you know I already linked to the same news on the posts Bones Could Yield Dodo DNA and Flightless Fred has scientists in raptures. However, that National Geographic article is good, as usual, and there more additional information on it.

Until now most of the information about dodos has come from scattered bone fragments. Only one other full skeleton was ever unearthed—in the 1860s—but it has been of limited scientific value, because the person who discovered it never revealed where it was found.

“We need to know about the location to understand the ecology of the dodo,” said Kenneth Rijsdijk, a scientist with Geological Survey of the Netherlands, who plans to study the environment in which the newfound bird was discovered.

The site of the new dodo skeleton and the layout of its bones has been precisely recorded, making the find already very useful to scientists, he added.

“We can take soil samples and discover how and why the animal got there,” Rijskijk said.

What’s more, the location of the new skeleton makes it much more likely to yield DNA, said Beth Shapiro, a geneticist from Oxford University who studies dodo remains. [...]

The cave site of the new skeleton is likely to provide the best hope of a decent DNA sample because the bones will not have been exposed to sunlight and the temperature was fairly constant, she added.

“We are really excited about the new find and hope it might tell us much more about the behavior and appearance of dodos,” Shapiro said.

PS.: Photograph from Reuters, inset illustration from Getty Images.

Paysage avec oiseaux (1628) by the Flemish painter Roelandt Savery.

I love the thought of these characters from various fairy-tales living in a perpetual state of wanting to relive their big moment. . .the 15 min of fame – if you will. Always on the lookout for another child to come around and play.

Recruiting A New Alice by tartx.