Paris: a pair of dodos resurrected for the 30th anniversary of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution at the National Museum of Natural History

This bird lived in Mauritius until the end of the 17th century. It is one of the symbols of the extinction of animal species as a result of human activity.

From the weekend of Saturday March 23 and Sunday March 24, two loving dodos, one looking curious and enthusiastic, the other grumpy and suspicious, greeted visitors to the Grand Gallery of Evolution at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris at the entrance to the Extinct Species Room. What could be more logical when dodos are undoubtedly representatives of one of the most famous extinct species next to dinosaurs. With one difference, their meteoric extinction has nothing to do with an asteroid and everything to do with human activity.

In fact, less than a century passed between the arrival of the Dutch on the island of Mauritius in 1598 and the disappearance of the dodos in 1662. The consequence is not so much the hunting as the landing of the rodents who enjoyed the rodents with them. eggs dodos

Little knowledge of this species

It was this story that the museum wanted to tell with the reconstruction of two dodos specimens. But how to bring back to life an animal about which we know almost nothing? Which left only a few bones, rare paintings and vague descriptions of shy, clumsy and flightless birds? The work was entrusted to a sculptor, but all casts of the head, body and legs were scientifically verified. The museum still gives pride of place to fiction by choosing to feature the couple because, as Lewis Carroll wrote with his crazy dodo, “Even if life has no meaning, nothing prevents us from inventing one.”

The sleep of the museum was designed to be as true to reality as possible. Visitors will discover that these birds weren’t so clumsy after all. Perhaps they were even as intelligent as their pigeon cousins, capable of transmitting messages. No one will ever be able to answer this question. If an American company claims it wants to bring dodos back to life by inserting pigeons into their genome, chances are this crazy project will remain in the fiction phase. All the better, because while it might be worth giving them a chance, we can’t really resurrect an extinct species. And then today, in the already too large room of extinct species of the Museum, many other representatives of the wild fauna are preserved, of which only humans can prevent them from joining the dodos of Mauritius. So we wake up. Sleep done!