The effort to revive extinct dodo bird in a rather “Jurassic Park” style has picked up renewed momentum after a US-based genetic engineering company managed to garner a $150mn investment to bring back the dodo on our planet

Scientists are trying to revive the dodo bird in a “Jurassic Park” style. The dodo went extinct more than 400 years ago. The project involves: 

• Ancient DNA sequencing 
• Gene editing technology 
• Synthetic biology 

The scientists hope the project will lead to new techniques for bird conservation. 

The US-based genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences is leading the project. They have already revived the woolly mammoth and the thylacine. The dodo would be their first bird. 

The scientists have sequenced the dodo’s entire genome using DNA from a skull in the Natural History Museum of Denmark. They plan to edit genes from the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest living relative. 

The dodo was a large bird, about three feet tall, with grey feathers and a white tail. It had tiny wings and a small sternum. The dodo lived in forests on Mauritius and had no large predators. It ate fallen fruit, nuts, seeds, bulbs, roots, crabs, and shellfish.

In January 2023, Colossal Biosciences announced plans to resurrect the dodo bird. The company is a genetic engineering and de-extinction company that has also worked on reviving the woolly mammoth and the thylacine. The dodo would be Colossal’s first bird

The company has received a $150 million investment to bring back the dodo. They have also partnered with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, a conservation organization that works with the Mauritian government. 

Beth Shapiro, lead paleogeneticist at Colossal, has sequenced the dodo’s full genome. The team also needs to work with primordial germ cells (PGCs). These cells can be extracted from a bird’s egg and cultured in a dish. 

Some scientists are skeptical about the project, saying that “de-extinction” efforts take money and attention away from saving species that are still on Earth.

Where did dodo birds live? The dodo was endemic to the island of Mauritius, 500 miles from the Eastern coast of Madagascar. The dodo was primarily a forest bird, occasionally venturing closer to the shoreline

The dodo bird was native to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. The dodo’s habitat was mostly in the island’s forests, but they would also travel to the shorelines. The dodo’s habitat was made up of: 

Forests, Drier coastal regions, Mountain regions, Pandanus trees, Tambalacoque trees, Endemic plants. 

The dodo was a large, flightless bird that was bigger than a turkey and weighed about 23 kilograms. It had blue-gray feathers, a large head and beak, and small, useless wings. 

The dodo became extinct less than 80 years after being discovered by Dutch soldiers. The dodo’s extinction was caused by: 

• Deforestation 
• Hunting 
• Destruction of their nests by animals brought to the island by the Dutch

What did a dodo eat?

In addition to fallen fruits, the dodo probably subsisted on nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. It has also been suggested that the dodo might have eaten crabs and shellfish, like their relatives the crowned pigeons

Why did humans eat dodos?

The birds had no natural predators, so they were unafraid of humans. These sailors, and others to come, quickly decimated the dodo population as an easy source of fresh meat for their voyages. As humans settled on the island, loss of habitat further threatened the birds.

Did dodos used to fly?

The dodo’s large size and inability to fly were adaptations that allowed this bird to survive some of the most hostile conditions and climactic events imaginable. Only in the 1600s did a force more deadly than extreme drought and volcanic eruptions lead to its extinction: humans

dodo bird a dinosaur?

Answer and Explanation: One could claim that dodo birds are and are not dinosaurs. While all bird species evolved from therapods, most people do not consider birds to be dinosaurs, just the descendants of dinosaurs.

Who first saw the dodo?

Portuguese sailors

The birds were first seen by Portuguese sailorsabout 1507 and were exterminated by humans and their introduced animals. The dodo was extinct by 1681, the Réunion solitaire by 1746, and the Rodrigues solitaire by about 1790.

Was the dodo friendly?

The dodos built their nests on the ground and ate fruit that fell from the trees. They had no natural predators on Mauritius. They’re thought to have been curious, friendly, and agile, so perfectly adapted to their isolated environment that they could live comfortably and fearlessly.

Why were dodo birds special?

The dodo, they observed, was a sturdy, robust bird, with thick leg bones and a broad pelvis. It also had sizable kneecaps, which scientists had never noted before and would have given the heavy, flightless bird knee joints that were “maneuverable, strong, and supportive,” Hume says(full article source google)