Revs were showing up. It wouldn’t be long before the Revs would lead a full attack on the city. The Mayor of the city was John Smith. He viewed all creativity as a waste of energy. When Mr. Smith saw the Revs begin to swell in number, he decided to take action. Mr. Smith was a genius when it came to warfare, he had created many different weapons to use against his foes. This was how he got into his position, by destroying anything that was different from him. Mr. Smith eventually invented a new type of weapon. The pained. The pained was a special fluid that would attack a persons heart using it to pump more of itself into the entire body, eventually causing the victim tothe University of Amsterdam – science is finally giving the dodo the attention it deserves.

Dodos were flightless birds, related to pigeons. They evolved on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

At most there were a few hundred people living in a coastal settlement

However, it is difficult to trace that evolutionary process. "The island has acidic soil, and is tropical and humid. It's a very unforgiving environment for fossils," says Claessens.

All we can say for sure is that the dodo evolved at some point in the last 8 million years – simply because it was 8 million years ago that Mauritius, a volcanic island rather like Hawaii, first rose above the waves.

The dodo's extinction is easier to pin down than its origins.

Dutch sailors probably first encountered the bird