Inside the Dodo’s skull, scientists found a bird unlike any living pigeon
CT scans and digital endocasts of rare dodo skulls suggest the extinct bird had a brain broadly comparable in relative size to living pigeons, challenging its centuries-old reputation as unusually simple. The dodo combined relatively large eye sockets with unusually small optic lobes, while evidence from its olfactory, beak-sensory and auditory anatomy suggests it may have relied on several senses rather than detailed vision alone. Researchers caution that skull anatomy cannot reconstruct behavior with certainty, but comparisons with 36 living pigeon and dove species provide new clues to how the dodo experienced its Mauritian environment. A bird that vanished more than 300 years ago is offering new clues about how it once lived. Researchers have taken a rare look inside one of the only complete dodo skulls in the world, revealing details about how this famous species may have sensed and moved through its island home. Looking Inside A Lost Species Only two complete dodo skulls are known to exist. One has been preserved in Copenhagen for centuries. Researchers recently examined it using high-resolution CT …
