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Extinct

Dodo

Raphus cucullatus

Oxford museum display with a dodo skeleton and a feathered reconstruction
Image: BazzaDaRambler / Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY 2.0 )
Extinct IUCN: Extinct

What it is

The dodo was a large flightless pigeon endemic to Mauritius. IUCN lists it as Extinct. No complete stuffed specimen survives; knowledge comes from bones, a few relics, and seventeenth-century accounts and paintings.

Range

Mauritius only. It had no mainland population.

What happened

Dutch and other visitors hunted dodos. More decisive were the pigs, rats, dogs, and crab-eating macaques people brought, which ate eggs and chicks, plus the cutting of forest. The last widely accepted sighting is 1662; the species was gone by the 1690s.

When / status

Extinct by the late seventeenth century, on an island people had only recently occupied year-round.

Human role

Hunting plus introduced mammals on an island with no prior land predators.

Sources

IUCN Red List (Raphus cucullatus, EX); Roberts & Solow and later reviews of last-sighting dates.