Preface

One could look at the story of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) as a series of tragedies, a Shakespearean play that climaxes with an ecological disaster initiated by seafarers, and the invasive species they transported to the island of Mauritius more than 300 years ago. Yet, beyond the narrative of tragic events we also see opportunities, namely, a chance to increase our understanding of the life history of a unique flightless bird, an animal that has the dubious distinction of being a true icon of extinction. It is our hope that this memoir will provide a building block that will not only further our knowledge in reconstructing the life history of the dodo, but also as a pathway to learn lessons from the past and how they may affect us today. The dodo was endemic to Mauritius, and during the brief period of human and dodo coexistence on the island, it was already considered to be special, a bird worthy of transport across the seas as a gift to royalty and trading partners, or as a curiosity for the European public to admire (e.g., Parish, 2013; Winters and Hume, 2015). Unfortunately, the dodo rapidly went extinct, long before any scientific study was undertaken, and before the concept of extinction entered the human consciousness. With the development of museum collections in its infancy in the 17th century, and with taxidermy techniques being relatively poorly known, only very few remains of the dodo were preserved. The publications of Duncan (1828) and Strickland and Melville (1848), based on the historical record and the few dodo remains known at the time, helped fuel a ‘dodomania’ that encompassed much of the Victorian period. A scientific renaissance in the study of the dodo began after the 1865 discovery of the Mare aux Songes locality, a marsh in southeastern Mauritius that was rich in dodo bones. The marsh discoveries enabled the famous Victorian comparative anatomist Sir Richard Owen to generate the first skeletal reconstruction of the dodo in 1866. However, interest in the dodo and collection efforts at the Mare aux Songes waned in the following decades, and by the 1940s, the location of the marsh had been largely forgotten. In the late 20th century, the marsh was even thought to have been built over by the newly constructed Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, preventing any further scientific study. The fortuitous rediscovery in 2005 of the Mare aux Songes, which was actually located a few kilometers south of the airport, has opened an important new chapter in dodo research. This rediscovery was followed by six interdisciplinary expeditions between 2006 and 2011, during which field evidence was collected to unravel the taphonomic and environmental conditions that led to the formation of this 4200-year-old multitaxic bonebed (e.g., Nicholls, 2006; Rijsdijk et al., 2009, 2011; De Boer et al., 2015). Work by the members of the Dodo Research Programme, a multidisciplinary international team of scientific experts, has provided an unparalleled detailed insight into the world of the dodo (in this memoir see Rijsdijk et al., 2015). Crucially, for the present contribution, it was found that the marsh does not contain any articulated skeletons, but rather disassociated skeletal elements of dodos and other Mauritian vertebrates. Thus, all of the dodo skeletons that were assembled from previous excavations in the marsh were reconstructed using the bones of many different individual birds. These composite skeletons offer a general overview into the morphology of the dodo (e.g., Owen, 1866, 1872; Newton and Gadow, 1893), yet they are incomplete and can provide only a partial understanding of the anatomy of the extinct bird. This memoir has its origin in a project to study the biomechanics of locomotion in the dodo (the ‘dodomotion’ project), a promising subject for investigating musculoskeletal modifications associated with the rapid evolution of large body size. Associated skeletal material from a single individual is preferred from a biomechanics perspective, because it would preserve correct relative proportions for the different components of the skeleton, unlike the composite skeletons derived from the Mare aux Songes. Fortunately, associated skeletons of the dodo do exist. More than 100 years ago, a Mauritian amateur naturalist named Etienne Thirioux discovered the remains of dodos and other extinct fauna of Mauritius, including two exceptional dodo skeletons. Thirioux tried to get his discoveries published by leading British scientists; however, his requests were never fully acted upon and his discoveries were soon largely forgotten (in this Memoir see Claessens and Hume, 2015). Informed by the new insights into the Mare aux Songes assemblage from the Dodo Research Programme, and the reported existence of associated dodo skeletal material discovered by Thirioux (e.g., Newton, 1904), L.C. and his students traveled to Port Louis in August 2011 to examine the Mauritius Institute’s Thirioux dodo skeleton. Our examination affirmed that this specimen, which may have been on public display at the Mauritius Institute for more than a century, represents a (near-)complete single individual. We were able to trace a second dodo specimen discovered by Thirioux to the Durban Museum of Natural Science in South Africa, thanks to a brief note on its acquisition by the former museum curator and director, Ernest Chubb, published in 1919. The specimen was purchased from the heirs of Thirioux in 1918. Our examination has shown that the second skeleton is a partial composite that includes bones from more than one individual, but it is largely associated and also exceptionally complete. The importance of both Thirioux dodo skeletons appears to have been occasionally recognized (e.g., Newton, 1904; Chubb, 1919), but neither specimen has been studied in any detail until this memoir. Digital three-dimensional (3-D) scans were created of both specimens for the biomechanical modeling of musculoskeletal function. Considering the fragile nature and metal wire assembly of the specimens, laser surface scanning was chosen over other imaging methods as the safest method for digitizing the specimens for biomechanical analysis. Over a period of 3 weeks in August 2011, L.C. and his students scanned the Mauritius Institute Thirioux dodo skeleton, and in January 2012 they laser surface scanned the Durban Thirioux dodo. Initial editing of the static 3-D scan model was undertaken on-site during scanning, and further editing of the scans into a dynamic 3-D model was undertaken by a team of undergraduate students at the College of the Holy Cross, as part of the Aves 3D project (http:// Aves3D.org). During our investigation of the anatomy of the Thirioux dodos for the dodomotion project, we were surprised to find that many of the anatomical details preserved in the specimens were previously unknown or undescribed, including several wing bones and the sesamoids of the hind limb. Ultimately, these discoveries led to the realization that the Thirioux dodos contained so much novel information and were of such exceptional value that they warranted a dedicated monographic treatment. Thus, we are grateful to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology for the opportunity to publish a comprehensive descriptive atlas of the