One Of The Last Surviving Dodo Birds Was Killed By A Shotgun Blast To The Head

Sadly, the Dodo bird went extinct over 300 years ago, but science is now shedding some light on exactly how one of the last remaining Dodos was killed. The prized Dodo bird was thought to have inspired author Lewis Carroll to create a Dodo character in the famous tale of "Alice in Wonderland". Now, a special scanner reveals the Dodo in question was murdered in cold blood by a shotgun blast to the head.

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The famous Dodo was loaded into a micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanner which revealed to researchers a number of weird fleck marks in the bird's neck and skull region. Upon closer inspection, the flecks were revealed to be tiny lead pellets proving the flightless bird was shot in the back of its head.

Paul Smith, the director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England, said the findings came as a complete surprise. The specimen known as the Oxford dodo is on display and for years curators thought the specimen was the same bird that was brought to London alive in 1638. People would pay to see the curious-looking and rare bird on display and feed it.

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<span style="margin-top:15px;rgba(42,51,6,0.7);font-size:12px;">University of Warwick</span>

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After the bird died, or rather was killed as we now know, the remains were acquired by John Tradescant the Elder whose family provided the founding collection for the University of Oxford museums. But the great performing Dodo from London was never shot, that we know of, so where did the Oxford Dodo come from?

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<span style="margin-top:15px;rgba(42,51,6,0.7);font-size:12px;">University of Warwick</span>

Closer examination of the Dodo's thick skull shows the shots that killed the bird didn't penetrate the skull. "This is a flightless bird, so obviously, somebody snuck up behind the poor thing and just shot it in the head," researcher Mark Williams said. "At the moment, we don't know where the bird was actually shot. Was it shot in the U.K.? More likely, was it shot in the Mauritius and then transferred to the U.K.? Was it shot for food on a ship? We really don't know."

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Source: https://www.livescience.com/62359-dodo-murdered-shotgun.html