text: " as dead as the dodo " what is the.........? origine of this proverb/quotation ? as dead as a dodo  meaning  unambiguously and unequivocally dead.   origin  the dodo was a flightless bird somewhat like a turkey. it was native to mauritius and the last live specimen was seen in 1681. the extinction of the species is attributed to the introduction of domestic animals to mauritius. mind you biologists thought that coelacanths had been extinct for 70 million years until 1938, when fishermen of south africa were found to have been regularly catching and eating them.