The Famous Dodo. Extinct (about 1662)
German illustration by F. John (1890).
In 1598 a ship of Portuguese sailors landed on the island of Mauritius and discovered, a previously unknown species of bird, known today as the Dodo Bird. This bird was like nothing they had ever seen before, and having been living in solitude on the island with no natural predators it was a surprisingly fearless. The sailors however mistook this for stupidity therefore giving the bird its name, the “dodo”. Over the course of the next century the dodo was killed by humans and other non-indigenous animals that were brought with them and less then 100 years after it was discovered, it was completely wiped out. The Dodo remains one of the most widely known cases of animal extinctions.