Dodo and muskox

This video is called dodo bird tribute.

Today, to three special exhibits in the natural history museum.

One small one about the Ice Age muskox skull, found in the North Sea by a fishing boat.

More muskox news: here.

Study: Young Arctic muskoxen better at keeping warm than scientists thought: here.

A somewhat bigger one, on the top floor, was about the expedition to Mauritius to find out about the dodo and its environment.

There is a rather widespread idea that the dodo became extinct by seventeenth century Dutch sailors eating it.

However, this does not seem to have happened often, as the sailors did not like the dodo meat.

Archaeologists have investigated the soil around the fortress of the Dutch East India Company on Mauritius, and did not find a single dodo bone.

They did find bones of other, mainly introduced, animals, like pigs and rats; whose introduction probably was the real cause of the dodo and other native Mauritian animals becoming extinct.

In the exhibit, there were bones of the now extinct native Mauritian giant tortoise; and of a Geochelone tortoise; introduced?

There was also an artist’s reconstruction of the dodo’s environment, two thousand years ago, with many animals depicted, including the Mascarene coot.

The third exhibit, about Linnaeus, Buffon, and classification in biology, deserves a log of its own.