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The dodo was variously declared a small ostrich, a rail, an albatross, or a vulture, by early scientists. [3] In 1842, Danish zoologist Johannes Theodor Reinhardt proposed that dodos were ground pigeons, based on studies of a dodo skull he had discovered in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
However, his main area of research is the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues, where in particular he has studied the history of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). He has contributed both scientifically and artistically to a large number of palaeontological papers, and described ten new species of extinct bird from the islands ...
The main island was the only known home of the dodo, which, along with several other avian species, became extinct soon after human settlement. Other endemic animals, such as the echo parakeet , the Mauritius kestrel and the pink pigeon , have survived and are subject to intensive and successful ongoing conservation efforts.
The Raphina are a clade of extinct flightless birds formerly called didines or didine birds. [c] They inhabited the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, but became extinct through hunting by humans and predation by introduced non-native mammals following human colonisation in the 17th century.
Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time (i.e., less than 2 million years). [18] [51] The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian extinction, the Permian–Triassic extinction ...
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The Rodrigues solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Rodrigues, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Genetically within the family of pigeons and doves, it was most closely related to the also extinct dodo of the nearby island Mauritius, the two forming the subfamily Raphinae.
Jersey Zoo (formerly Durrell Wildlife Park [3]) is a zoological park established in 1959 [2] on the island of Jersey in the English Channel by naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. It is operated by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. It has approximately 169,000 visitors per year. [citation needed]