From the AP:
PLAINE MAGNIEN, Mauritius (Reuters) – How did the dodo die out? Scientists in Mauritius launched a project on Wednesday to discover why the giant bird became extinct.
Most theories blame settlers who found the plump flightless bird on the Indian Ocean island in the 16th century and began to hunt it relentlessly.
In an attempt to provide a scientific answer, the Dodo Research Program plans to study fossils from a mass dodo grave unearthed in southern Mauritius last October and an adjacent site, using carbon dating techniques and DNA analysis.
The aim is to understand the dodo’s world in the 10,000 years before humans discovered Mauritius, then to determine the impact human colonizers had when they arrived.
One other theory is that they died off because the settlers introduced pigs to the island, which ate off the same vegetation that the Dodo’s did. Dodo’s were supposedly not good eating: very fatty.
Next up, the researchers are going to determine what happened to the rational liberals.
