Comeback for Dodo?

Extinct creature's DNA may help to bring the big bird back
By Steve Farrar

Special to The Star

LONDON - Scientists are to extract DNA from a dead dodo for the first time, raising the prospect that the bird whose name is synonymous with extinction could be resurrected.

British experts will recover fragments of genetic material from a preserved head and foot kept in Oxford University's Museum of Natural History.

The research will identify the closest living relative and may pave the way to the re-creation of the species.

Ecologists, however, have warned that bringing back a bird resembling the dodo might persuade the public that there is no longer any need to protect endangered species, as any creatures wiped out by man could be recreated.

A team of Oxford University experts, led by Dr. Alan Cooper, has already started to build the dodo's family tree by testing the DNA of African and Indian Ocean pigeons, to which it is thought to be related.

While genetic material from the extinct bird has probably deteriorated into millions of fragments, Cooper is confident that modern methods will reveal enough to allow it to be compared with living species. This will show the experts where it fits into the family tree.

'With a lot of time and a lot of breeding you could probably get animals remarkably dodo-like.' - Dr. Eric Harley University of Cape Town scientist.

"If we can find out what the dodo's closest living relative is, it is going to tell us a lot about where the dodo came from and how it evolved," Cooper said.

Likely candidates include the Victoria crown pigeon from New Guinea and the saw-billed pigeon, both very large birds that spend their lives on the ground and rarely fly.

It could then be possible to work out the dodo's unique genes, said Dr. Charlie Shaw, an expert in ancient DNA at Durham University.

Once scientists have worked out the key genes that made the dodo unique, they could then create genetically engineered DNA to put into the nucleus of an egg and hatch a dodo-like bird using one of the pigeons identified by Cooper's survey.

It would, however, be almost impossible to recreate a perfect dodo, because its genetic code, which survives only in tiny fragments, could never be worked out to a sufficiently high degree of accuracy, said Dr. Ken Joysey, a paleontologist at Cambridge University. "You only need to get a little bit wrong to get a non-viable animal - a single mistake could be lethal," he said.

An alternative might be to use selective breeding to create a bird resembling a dodo. This would involve taking its closest living relatives, inter-breeding them and selecting the young that most exhibited the traits of a dodo.

Dr. Eric Harley, a scientist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, is using the same method to try to resurrect the quagga, a type of African horse wiped out by hunters 100 years ago, by selectively breeding the closely related zebras that still carry the quagga's genes.

The task would be more difficult with the dodo because, unlike the quagga, many of its genes have been lost.

"With a lot of time and a lot of breeding you could probably get animals remarkably dodo-like, but what would be the point?" he said.

Experts believe the dodo's ancestors flew to the Indian Ocean island of

Mauritius within the last million years, and in the absence of predators, evolved into large, flightless animals that foraged for food on the forest floor.

The birds were first seen by Europeans when Dutch sailors arrived in 1598. They left the dodo alone as it was virtually inedible.

However, it is believed that dogs, pigs, rats and monkeys brought by ship

hunted adult birds down, raided their nests for eggs and out-competed them for food. Within 70 years, the last dodo was dead - the first species of animal in recorded history to be effectively wiped out by man.

All that remains are a large quantity of bones.

"We have to bring back extinct species to fill the gaps they leave in the

ecosystem," said Dr. Carl Jones, director of the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation. "If we cannot rebuild them from DNA, we could use the DNA to tell us what the nearest species is and find a surrogate."

Saving ecosystems was a far more important task than preserving or resurrecting individual species, said Dr. Brian Groombridge, who helps compile the "red lists" of endangered species at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge.

"Various techniques that have been developed, like captive breeding or even

the possible recreation of extinct populations, have a legitimate role, but it would be a drop in the ocean when you look at the bigger picture of global biodiversity," he said.

But in Mauritius, a recreated dodo would be welcomed like a returning hero, according to Seeneevasen Ponnusamy, the Mauritian deputy high commissioner.   "The dodo is highly regarded in Mauritius and stands on one side of our national emblem," he said. "It would be marvellous if you could recreate something that looked like it."