Paleontologists made the first three-dimensional atlas of the dodo – Informador.com.mx

the atlas is the first to show the exact relative proportions of the animal with some previously unknown bones. SPECIAL / vertpaleo.org/

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• The dodo was a huge bird that could reach one meter tall and weigh about 18 kilos

This is the most complete on the anatomy of the bird extinct in recent history human

BARCELONA, SPAIN (24 / MAR / 2016) .- More than 300 years after its sunset , an international team of researchers has published online first three-dimensional atlas of the skeleton of the dodo, a bird flightless, icon among species extinct in recent human history.

This atlas, published in the “Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir”, “is the treaty more comprehensive and complete anatomy of the skeleton of the dodo and represents the efforts of a large team of international scientists for more than five years,” Dutch paleontologist Hanneke Meijer, one of those responsible for the investigation.

The dodo (dodo) represents one of the best known examples of extinction caused by humans.

It was a great endemic flightless bird Mauritius and the last copy was documented in 1693, less than a hundred years after the Dutch colonized the island.

The new atlas is the first to show the exact relative proportions of the animal and includes some previously unknown bones as the kneecap, ankle and wrist bones and has been made available to the public through Internet.

The study of specimens in 3D has also enabled to simulations of how this great animal moved.

“Skull dodo is so large and its peak so robust that it is easy to understand that the first naturalists relate to the vultures and other raptors rather than with a dove,” Meijer said, who led the research at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP) and currently works at the University of Bergen (Norway).

The ancestors of the dodo came to Mauritius about eight million years ago and, according to specialists, often species on islands evolve quite differently than they do on the continent and in the case dodo, lost the ability to fly, probably due to the absence of predation.

In addition rats and other predators introduced by humans had a devastating effect on the eggs and hatchlings.

The multidisciplinary study of this bird has also allowed understand what he looked like the ecosystem where lived species and why many vertebrates disappeared during the climate change that occurred four thousand 200 years ago, mainly as a result of lack of water. And to estimate the current climate change on wildlife.

“The species confined to the islands are much more sensitive to environmental changes, especially the lack of water and salinization and pollution of water during droughts,” said Kenneth Rijsdijk, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who also participated in the study.

Despite its importance in popular culture, little is known about this species from a scientific perspective and from the collections of the seventeenth century has not survived no complete skeleton.

Between 1899 and 1910 a barber and amateur naturalist French, Etienne Thirioux, found a complete skeleton and other partial remains of this species in Mauritius that have now been used to create this first three-dimensional anatomical atlas dodo thanks to modern techniques of laser scanning.

The dodo was a huge bird that could reach up to one meter tall and weigh about 18 kilos. Belonged to the family of the Columbidae, as relatively small birds like pigeons and doves.