![]() ![]() Illustration from The Century Dictionary (New York, 1904):įrom a painting in the Belvedere, Vienna. The dodo was a massive, clumsy, flightless, and defenseless bird, about as large as a swan, covered with downy feathers, with a very stout hooked bill, short strong legs, short tail, and wings too small for flight so that it soon succumbed under the new conditions which the occupation of the island introduced, its extinction being probably due as much to the animals which man introduced as to the human invaders of the island. In 1866 bones in abundance were found, and the osseous structure has been described in detail. Knowledge of the bird was for some time confined to the quaint and often questionable narratives of voyagers, certain pictures, mostly by Dutch artists, and a few fragmentary remains. The dodo was living in Mauritius on the discovery of that island by the Portuguese under Mascarenhas in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it is known to have survived until July, 1681. The following definition of the noun dodo is from The Century Dictionary (New York, 1904):Ī recently extinct bird of Mauritius, Didus ineptus, the type of the family Dididæ and suborder Didi, now usually assigned to the order Columbæ. The phrase (as) dead as a dodo, or (as) dead as the dodo, means, of a person or thing, irretrievably defunct or out of date. ![]()
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