Raphus cucullatus
The dodo is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest relative was the also-extinct and flightless Rodrigues solitaire. The two formed the subtribe Raphina, a clade of extinct flightless birds that are a part of the group that includes pigeons and doves. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos.
BazzaDaRambler · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- dodoPBDB
- Sits inside
- RaphusPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, granivorePBDB, for Columbidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Columbidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Columbidae
- Mass
- 10.2 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Raphus cucullatus on record, most of them in the Holocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrences- Holocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Raphus cucullatus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Raphus cucullatus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
41 taxa- Aphanapteryx bonasia2 sites
- Circus maillardi2 sites
- Fulica newtonii2 sites
- Lophopsittacus mauritianus2 sites
- Nesoenas mayeri2 sites
- Otus sauzieri2 sites
- Alectroenas nitidissimus1 site
- Allopeas1 site
- Alopochen mauritianus1 site
- Anas theodori1 site
- Bulinus1 site
- Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus1 site
- Cyclotopsis1 site
- Cylindraspis inepta1 site
- Cylindraspis triserrata1 site
- Egretta garzetta dimorpha1 site
- Foudia rubra1 site
- Gyraulus1 site
- Hypsipetes olivaceus1 site
- Lalage typica1 site
- Leiolopisma mauritiana1 site
- Leiolopisma telfairii1 site
- Lophopsittacus bensoni1 site
- Melanoides tuberculata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Raphus cucullatus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- Discovery of isolated dodo bones [Raphus cucullatus (L.), Aves, Columbiformes] from Mauritius cave shelters highlights human predation, with a comment on the status of the family Raphidae Wetmore, 19302
- Mid-Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte on oceanic island Mauritius provides a window into the ecosystem of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus)1
- On additional bones of the Dodo and other extinct birds of Mauritius obtained by Mr. Théodore Sauzier1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Raphus cucullatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- BazzaDaRambler
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- iRahulRajput
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dodo”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itRaphus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)