A rare four-inch fragment of a dodo bone will go on sale in Britain
in April, around 300 years after the flightless bird and icon of
obsolescence was hunted to extinction.
Auctioneers Christie's said on Wednesday it was hoping to raise as
much as 15,000 pounds ($22,600) for the piece of a bird's
femur.
The last sale of dodo remains the auction house could find took
place in London in 1934 - and it was expecting considerable
interest from a highly specialized band of collectors and
enthusiasts.
"It is so rare for anyone to part with these prized items," said
James Hyslop, head of Travel, Science and Natural History at
Christie's auction house in South Kensington, London.
"From its appearance in "Alice in Wonderland" to the expression
'dead as dodo', the bird has cemented its place in our cultural
heritage," he added.
The Western world first heard of dodos in 1598 when Dutch sailors
reported seeing them on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
Less than 100 years later, the birds had disappeared. Most experts
say they were probably hunted down by successive waves of hungry
sailors, and the pigs and other large animals they brought on to
the island.
No complete specimens have survived - and scientists have been
pouring over fragments of remains for years to try and reconstruct
what the dodo might have looked like.
The famous image of a squat, comic, short-necked bird, immortalized
in John Tenniel's illustrations for "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland", is widely thought to be wrong.
Christie's did not say whether the thigh bone, part of an unnamed
private English collection, would provide any fresh clues.
The auction house said its bone was almost certainly excavated in
1865 at Mare aux Songes in Mauritius during a dig by natural
history enthusiast George Clark.
The bone is one of 260 lots in a Travel, Science and Natural
History sale held by Christie's in London on April 24. The items
are open to public viewing from April 20.
Other items on the block include a fossilized egg from Madagascar's
equally extinct elephant bird, more than 100 times the average size
of a chicken egg, as well as scientific instruments, maps and
globes.
DoDo Bird
