The Red Notebook
Reuters: Scientists fly into raptures over flightless Fred
The remains of a dodo found in a cave beneath bamboo and tea plantations in Mauritius offer the best chance yet to learn about the extinct flightless bird, a scientist said on Friday.
The discovery was made earlier this month in the Mauritian highlands but the location was kept secret until the recovery of the skeleton, nicknamed "Fred", was completed on Friday. Four men guarded the site overnight.
Julian Hume, a paleontologist at Britain's Natural History Museum, told Reuters the remains were likely to yield excellent DNA and other vital clues, because they were found intact, in isolation, and in a cave.
I wonder if Nunatak knows any more about this.
Comments:
Well, you can't very well hold that sort of carrot out and not expect a comment, now can you?
As I said over on the Beagle Project blog (www.thebeagleproject.com/beagleblog)...
Darwin would have loved this, being a pigeon fancier!Coming soon: the dodo genome project.Hopefully CBOL will at least barcode it as part of their All Birds barcoding initiative:http://barcoding.si.edu/allbirds.htm
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