In the world’s lexicon, the Dodo is an example of clumsiness, a species doomed to go extinct. 
 
 Such perceptions, say an international team of researchers, are mostly wrong. 
 
 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. 
 
 The researchers — Leon Claessens of the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, Julian Hume of the Natural History Museum UK, Hanneke Meijer of the Institut Català de Paleontologia in Barcelona, and their colleagues in the Dodo Research Programme — recently reconstructed how the Dodo walked, moved, and lived in unprecedented detail. They did so with the help of a high-tech 3-D laser scanner, which they used to study the only known complete skeleton. 
 
 An amateur collector found the bones around 1903 on Mauritius. “Being able to examine the skeleton of a single individual Dodo, which is not made up of as many individual birds as there are bones, as is the case in composite skeletons, truly allows us to appreciate the way the Dodo looked and see how tall or rotund it really was,” says Hume. 
 
 The Thirioux skeleton, named for its discoverer, Etienne Thirioux, contains “even the smallest bones, such as the kneecaps, that are usually lost when an animal disintegrates,” says Claessens. “Several of those bones were previously unknown and have never been described scientifically.” 
 
 Seeing the Dodo as it actually was, the researchers say, provides a rare glimpse into the process of animal extinction. “If we want to understand the effects of ecosystem disruption in order to aid conservation, then in-depth knowledge of previous extinction events is paramount.” 
 
 Using scans of the skeleton, Claessens, Meijer, and their colleagues estimated the Dodo’s weight. Skinny birds had a mass of 25 pounds (11.3 kg), intermediate birds weighed about 32 pounds (14.5 kg), and fat Dodos could have topped the scales at 42 pounds (19 kg), they say. 
 
 If the species had lived, it would be among the heaviest birds on the planet, weighing about the same as the King Penguin. 

 New laser scans of the dodo, perhaps the most famous animal to have gone extinct in human history, have unexpectedly exposed portions of its anatomy unknown to science, which are revealing secrets about how the bird once lived. 
 
 The dodo was a flightless bird about 3 feet (1 meter) tall that was native to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. It went extinct by 1693, less than a century after the Dutch discovered the island in 1598, killed off by creatures such as rats and pigs, which sailors introduced to Mauritius either accidentally or intentionally. 
 
 The giant bird was actually a type of pigeon. "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 co-author Hanneke Meijer at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain. 
 
 Surprisingly, despite the dodo's fame, and the fact the bird was alive during recorded human history, little is known about the anatomy and biology of this animal. "The dodo's extinction happened at a time when people didn't understand the concept of extinction — science as we know it was still in its infancy,"lead study author Leon Claessens, a vertebrate paleontologist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, told Live Science. "This meant that nobody tried to make a collection of the bird or study it in detail." [Wipe Out! History's 7 Most Mysterious Extinctions] 
 
 To shed new light on the dodo, Claessens and his colleagues went to the Natural History Museum in Port Louis, Mauritius, to investigate the only known complete skeleton from a single dodo. All other dodo skeletons are composites of several birds. 
 
 Here, a 3D digital model of the skull of the only complete skeleton of a single dodo, found in 1903 on Mauritius. Credit: Leon Claessens and Mauritius Museums Council 
 
 Amateur naturalist and barber Etienne Thirioux found the specimen the researchers analyzed near Le Pouce Mountain on Mauritius in about 1903. It was unstudied by scientists until now. 
 
 The scientists used a laser scanner to create a 3D digital model of the specimen. In addition, they scanned a second dodo skeleton Thirioux also created, a composite of two or more skeletons that was housed at the Durban Museum of Natural Science in South Africa. 
 
 "We discovered that the anatomy of the dodo we were looking at was not previously described in detail," Claessens said. "There were bones of the dodo that were just unknown to science until now." 
 
 These skeletons contained previously unknown bones of the dodo, such as its kneecaps. The complete specimen also preserved the original skeletal proportions of the dodo that composites made of several birds did not. [See Images of the Dodo Bird Skeletons and Laser Scans] 
 
 "The 3D laser surface scans we made of the fragile Thirioux dodo skeletons enabled us to reconstruct how the dodo walked, moved and lived to a level of detail that has never been possible before," Claessens said. "There are so many outstanding questions about the dodo bird that we can answer with this new knowledge." 
 
 For instance, by discovering new dodo knee and ankle bones, "we can learn a lot about how it moved," Claessens said. "It will make a tremendous difference in calculations of the muscle force the dodo could have generated." 
 
 The researchers also found that the dodo's breastbone, or sternum, lacked a keel, unlike the Rodrigues solitaire, a closely related extinct flightless pigeon that was known to have used its wings in combat. This suggests that dodos fought each other less than Rodrigues solitaires fight each other. 
 
 The smaller ancestors of the dodo must have flown to Mauritius no more than 8 million years ago, when geologists suggest the volcanic island was born. Animals on islands often grow to gigantic sizes when they do not face the same competition as they do on the mainland. 
 
 "The dodo must have experienced a fourfold increase in body mass compared to its ancestors, if not an eightfold increase," Claessens said. "If that happened in 8 million years or less, that's a rapid increase. It raises the question of how the dodo would have continued to evolve if it weren't for humans." 
 
 "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 added. 
 
 In the future, the researchers "will investigate how the jaw muscles in the dodo's amazingly robust skull might have worked," Claessens said. "My best guess is that it was eating tremendously hard seeds, but who knows, maybe it was eating crabs." 
 
 The scientists detailed their findings today (Nov. 6) at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Berlin. 
 
 Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 NEW INSIGHTS INTO AN OLD BIRD 
 
 
 
 Berlin, Germany (November, 2014) – The dodo is among the most famous extinct creatures, and a poster child for human-caused extinction events. Despite its notoriety, and the fact that the species was alive during recorded human history, little is actually known about how this animal lived, looked, and behaved. A new study of the only known complete skeleton from a single bird takes advantage of modern 3-D laser scanning technology to open a new window into the life of this famous extinct bird. The study was presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Estrel, Berlin. 
 
 Leon Claessens, Associate Professor at the College of the Holy Cross, and lead researcher on the study said that, “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.” 
 
 
 
 A complete dodo skeleton, found by an amateur collector and barber, Etienne Thirioux, on the island of Mauritius between 1899 and 1917, has remained unstudied, even though it is the only complete dodo skeleton from a single individual bird known to exist. All other skeletons are incomplete composites, meaning that they are compiled from more than one individual. In addition, Thirioux constructed a second, partially composite skeleton, which contains many bones that also belong to a single bird. “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 scans were performed on site in Port Louis, Mauritius and Durban, South Africa, and allow examination of the biology of this enigmatic extinct bird in detail for the first time. Using the newest digital tools and techniques, the scans provide an insight into how the flightless dodo may have evolved its giant size, and how it walked and lived in its forest home. According to Kenneth Rijsdijk, of an Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam and a study author, “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.” 
 
 
 
 Having a complete single individual has allowed study of the dodo’s sternum (breastbone) in context. Its size relative to the closely related extinct flightless Rodrigues solitaire, which was known to have used its wings in combat, but lacking a keel on the sternum, unlike flying pigeons and the Rodrigues solitaire indicates that the dodo may have shown less intraspecific antagonistic behavior. Together with new information regarding dodo population structure, derived from the study of disarticulated remains from another locality, the Thirioux dodos open a new window upon an evolutionary experiment in rapid increase in body size and shift in locomotor mode, cut short by human-induced ecosystem destruction. 
 
 “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,” said Claessens. 
 
 
 
 #### 
 
 About the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 
 
 Founded in 1940 by thirty-four paleontologists, the Society now has more than 2,300 members representing professionals, students, artists, preparators, and others interested in VP. It is organized exclusively for educational and scientific purposes, with the object of advancing the science of vertebrate paleontology. 
 
 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology website: http://www.vertpaleo.org 
 
 
 
 Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 
 
 The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (JVP) is the leading journal of professional vertebrate paleontology and the flagship publication of the Society. It was founded in 1980 by Dr. Jiri Zidek and publishes contributions on all aspects of vertebrate paleontology. 
 
 Journal Web site: http://vertpaleo.org/Publications/Journal-of-Vertebrate-Paleontology.aspx 
 
 AUTHORS CONTACT INFORMATION: 
 
 
 
 Prof. Dr. LEON CLAESSENS 
 
 Department of Biology 
 
 College of the Holy Cross 
 
 Worcester, MA 
 
 USA 
 
 and 
 
 Naturalis Biodiversity Center 
 
 Leiden 
 
 The Netherlands 
 
 lclaesse@holycross.edu 
 
 claessens@post.harvard.edu 
 
 +1 508 332 6361 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Dr. KENNETH RIJSDIJK 
 
 Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics 
 
 University of Amsterdam 
 
 The Netherlands 
 
 K.F.Rijsdijk@uva.nl 
 
 +31 6 30095006 
 
 
 
 Dr. HANNEKE MEIJER 
 
 Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont 
 
 Barcelona 
 
 Spain 
 
 Hanneke.Meijer@gmail.com 
 
 +31 6 14978511 
 
 
 
 Dr. JULIAN HUME 
 
 The Natural History Museum 
 
 Tring 
 
 UK 
 
 j.hume@nhm.ac.uk 
 
 +44 (0)7753123222 
 
 
 
 Dr. ANWAR JANOO (not at the meeting) 
 
 University of Mauritius 
 
 Reduit 
 
 Mauritius 
 
 janooa@gmail.com
– When it comes to extinct creatures, few are as commonly known as the dodo. But when it comes to the dodo, few facts have been established about how the flightless birds lived. A new study of the bird unlocks some of its mysteries. As a press release explains, there is but a single complete dodo skeleton in existence, one that was found on the island of Mauritius between 1899 and 1917. Other skeletons of the birds are composites, meaning they're formed from the bones of various dodos, making Etienne Thirioux's find remarkable—but one that hadn't been studied. Using it, researchers were able to use 3D lasers to scan the surface of the fragile skeleton and "reconstruct how the dodo walked, moved, and lived to a level of detail that has never been possible before," per lead researcher Leon Claessens. Claessens notes that the Thirioux skeleton was an even richer source of information than anticipated, as it contains "even the smallest bones, such as the kneecaps, that are usually lost when an animal disintegrates. Several of those bones were previously unknown and have never been described scientifically." What they learned: The dodos weighed as much as 42 pounds, which Bird Watching Daily reports rival today's King Penguin in size. Thanks to the newly found knee and ankle bones, Claessens tells LiveScience the researchers will be able to better determine how the dodo moved by calculating its potential muscle force. They also intend to study the jaw muscles to determine what its diet may have been. Says Claessens, "My best guess is that it was eating tremendously hard seeds, but who knows, maybe it was eating crabs." (Scientists are also trying to "resurrect" the wine King David drank.)