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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ) — that towering icon of modern anthropogenic extinctions — was a pigeon.

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History repeating itself

10,000 Birds

If studying insects would lead you to suppose that God had an “an inordinate fondness for beetles&# , studying the pre-human avifauna of the Pacific would lead you to conclude that God was also quite partial to rails. The fossil record of the islands don’t show the Buff-banded Rail appearing until after humans arrived.

Tonga 165