Pássaro Dodô foi assassinado em sangue frio

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | April 19, 2018 07:01pm ET

Dodos foram extintos há mais de 300 anos, mas os cientistas só agora estão abrindo um caso frio depois de saber que um dos pássaros - o premiado espécime dodô que provavelmente inspirou o autor Lewis Carroll a criar um personagem dodó no livro de 1865 "Alice no País das Maravilhas". "- foi brutalmente assassinado. Depois de recentemente carregar o famoso dodo em um scanner de micro-tomografia computadorizada (micro-CT), os pesquisadores notaram que as imagens mostravam marcas estranhas no pescoço e na nuca do pássaro que não voa.

A closer inspection revealed that those flecks were tiny lead pellets, meaning that someone shot the dodo from behind, killing the wildfowl, the researchers announced Friday (April 20). [In Photos: The Famous Flightless Dodo]

O achado assassino foi uma surpresa completa, disse Paul Smith, diretor do Museu de História Natural da Universidade de Oxford, na Inglaterra, onde o espécime de dodô - chamado de dodô de Oxford - está em exibição. Durante anos, os curadores pensaram que o espécime era o mesmo pássaro que foi trazido para Londres em 1638, quando o animal ainda estava vivo, disse Smith. Este famoso dodô era um show de curiosidade, e as pessoas podiam pagar para ver e alimentá-lo.

A digital image created by the micro-CT scan of the famous Oxford dodo.

Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

It was thought that the curiosity-show dodo died and the remains of its body was later acquired by John Tradescant the Elder, whose family provided the founding collection for the University of Oxford museums. But the great performing dodo was never shot (at least that we know of), which raises the question: Where did the Oxford dodo come from if it's not the same one that performed in the London curiosity show so many years ago?

"There is now a mystery regarding how the specimen came to be in Tradescant's collection," Smith told Live Science. The even greater mystery is, "Who killed the dodo?" Smith said.
Dodos (Raphus cucullatus) were native to Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Europeans first took notice of the bird when Dutch explorers found the animals in 1598. But after decades of hungry sailors eating the birds, habitat loss and invasive rats, cats, dogs and pigs eating their eggs, dodos went extinct on their native island in 1662.
The Oxford dodo is the only specimen in the world that still contains skin and other soft tissues with extractable DNA. In a 2002 study published in the journal Science, researchers examined this dodo's DNA and found that the bird is, indeed, a giant flightless pigeon whose closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon.

Researchers decided to study the Oxford dodo specimen again so they could get a better idea of how dodos fed and what they ate, Smith said. So, Oxford researchers coordinated with scientists at the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) in England, where the bird was micro-CT scanned.

The white dots on this digital image of the dodo's skull shows the location of the deadly lead pellets.

Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

Curiosamente, o chumbo não penetrou no crânio espesso do dodô, revelado pelos scans. Mas esses tiros ainda mataram o pássaro, disseram os pesquisadores. "Este é um pássaro que não voa, então, obviamente, alguém se escondeu atrás do coitado e simplesmente atirou na cabeça", disse Mark Williams, líder dos grupos de pesquisa de Tecnologias de Avaliação de Produto e Metrologia da Universidade de Warwick, WMG. o dodô de Oxford. Agora que o cold case está aberto, os pesquisadores planejam analisar o chumbo para ver onde ele foi extraído.

"At the moment, we don't know where the bird was actually shot," Williams told Live Science. "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."