Back in the Sixteenth Century – Lambeth was once the home of one the world’s largest collections of curiosities (the Ark). When it opened it became a major attraction and was in fact the first museum where ordinary members of the public could go to see the exhibits on display. It was amongst these various curios that a Dodo bird was one of the items of interest. Today, that very Dodo bird is the worlds only and best-preserved example of this rarest of birds.
The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus)
The dodo is an extinct flightless bird that was native to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean These birds were about a metre tall and weighed about 20kg. They lived on fruit and nested on the ground. It is presumed that the dodo became flightless because of the ready availability of abundant food sources and a relative absence of predators in Mauritius.
The tale of the dodo’s decline begins in 1598 when Dutch sailors first encountered them. From early accounts, many of the Mauritian birds were tame and easily approached, and so easily caught by humans. But the species’ rapid decline was probably caused by the dogs, cats, rats and pigs that the sailors had brought with them. These animals spread across the island, destroying dodo habitats and eating their eggs. The last confirmed sighting of a dodo was in 1662; by the 1700s, it was considered extinct.
The dodo achieved widespread recognition for its role in the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it has since become a fixture in popular culture, often as a symbol of extinction and obsolescence.
As dead as a Dodo
www.phrases.org.uk
A Rarity of Specimens
The most intact example today is the virtually complete skeleton displayed at the Mauritius Institute in Port Louis, Mauritius, which comprises almost all its original bones (minus a few toe segments). All other skeletons are composites of various dodo birds.
At one point, though, there was at least one complete specimen. That bird belonged to John Tradescant in Lambeth. In 1659 the complete Tradescant Collection (including the dodo) was passed on to the collector Elias Ashmole, who gave it to the University of Oxford. In 1677 this important collection became part of the newly founded Ashmolean Museum and from that point on it has been known as the Oxford Dodo.
The Oxford Dodo is the best-preserved example in the world – comprising of a skull (uniquely still with skin attached and soft tissue), a sclerotic ringbone, a femur, a foot, a feather (removed from the head) several tissue samples and DNA. Regrettably, the museum burned the rest of the bird on January 8, 1755, because of severe decay, unaware that it was the last complete specimen in the world. So special and important is that it is kept under lock and key.
CT Scan
3D Model
The Oxford Dodo (OUMNH.ZC.11605) by Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Sketchfab
Why the Oxford Dodo is so important
Tradescant collection & the Lambeth Dodo
The Oxford Dodo was originally part of a wide-ranging collection of specimens and artefacts that was known as the Tradescant collection, the earliest major English cabinet of curiosities.
The Musaeum Tradescantianum was to become not only the most extensive in Europe but more important, the first to give access to the general public in Britain. It comprised a collection of curiosities assembled by naturalists/collectors John Tradescant the elder and his son in a building called The Ark, and a botanical collection on the grounds of the building.
Open in the 1620s The Ark was a popular attraction for London’s Society, which came in a steady stream to marvel at the exhibits and the beautiful gardens.
The earliest mention of the dodo appears in the Museum catalogue 1656 (p4), where it is listed as “Dodar, from the Island Mauritius; it is not able to flie being so big”; it is recorded under a “Whole Birds” section, implying that the dodo was fully intact at this point in time.
One theory goes that the Tradescants acquired the specimen in London, based on the report of a live dodo exhibited in the city in the late 1630s by politician Sir Hamon L’Estrange:
“About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowle hong out upon a cloth … and myselfe with one or two more then in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turky Cock, and so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker and of a more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong cock fesan, and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo…”
Sir Hamon L’Estrange
The Ark – Musaeum Tradescantianum
Turret House, the family home, was demolished in 1881 and the estate has been redeveloped; the house stood on the site of the present Tradescant Road and Walberswick Street, at 274 South Lambeth Road.
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