Dodo skeleton, Raphus cucullatus

Collected 1865
Common Name: Dodo
Scientific Name: Raphus cucullatus
Class: Aves
Order: Columbiformes
Family: Columbidae
Dimensions: Centimetres: approximately 50 (length), 50 (width), 80 (height)
Period: Pleistocene
Museum ID Number: 01214
Image Number: ROM2003_762_15
Location: 3 miles from Mahebourg; Africa
Collection Date: Collected in 1865; acquired in 1938
Object History: Previously owned by the British Museum and Harvard University

The Dodo is an extinct bird from Mauritius, an island in the southwestern Indian Ocean. The last record of a live dodo sighting was made by Benjamin Harry, who visited the island in 1681. Being a flightless bird, the dodo had no means of escape from hogs, dogs, other introduced European animals, and humans. Since the dodo nested on the ground, its eggs and young must have been particularly vulnerable. By 1700, less than 100 years after the dodo was first described, it was extinct.

The quintessential symbols of extinction, Dodos are related to pigeons. This Dodo skeleton was originally assembled by Sir Richard Owen at the British Museum in the 1860s. Purchased by Harvard University, and later received by the ROM on an exchange with Harvard in 1938, it is the only Dodo skeleton in Canada.