It’s believed the mummified head came from a dodo once displayed in London as a public attraction. And that’s because the Oxford University Museum of Natural History has the world’s only soft-tissue dodo specimen in existence.įrisbii via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 In fact, some of the earliest images of the dodo, dating back to 1598, show a much thinner, almost athletic bird.ĭespite all of the misleading information out there, there is one thing about dodos we’re certain we know: what its head looked like.
Today, some researchers believe the traditional depiction of the dodo may have been a product of artistic license, because its skeleton couldn’t have supported such weight. To add insult to injury, our depiction of dodos as strange, awkwardly-shaped birds may not even accurate-the skeletons in most museums are made of bones scavenged from different birds, so it’s difficult to know how close we get with our modern-day representations.īecause the dodo was extinct before cameras were invented, we can only rely on paintings and illustrations to help inform our current understanding of the flightless bird. The last dodo sighting was reported in 1662, and in 1680, the bird was declared officially extinct.
