text: The world’s most famous dodo, which inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, met an untimely and murderous end, scientists have discovered. 
   
   The Oxford Dodo is the most well-preserved example of the extinct bird on Earth and still contains soft tissue and DNA which could be used one day to resurrect the species. 
   
   It was always thought the Oxford Dodo survived the fate of its kin, and was brought back alive from Mauritius, ending up as an exotic curiosity on the streets of London. ||||| The last of the dodos left this planet somewhere in the mid to late 17th century, brought to extinction by early European explorers and invasive species of animals introduced to its native island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. 
   
   Extinct but not forgotten. 
   
   The Oxford University Museum of Natural History in the U.K. houses the last remains of a dodo in the world. It's one of the museum's most precious treasures because most dodo remains today are skeletons reconstructed from bones found on Mauritius. 
   
   The "Oxford dodo," on the other hand, includes the mummified bird's skull and foot and even skin and soft tissue, making it the only specimen that retains any viable DNA. It's invaluable to research, says the university's Prof. Paul Smith. 
   
   Now, using 21st-century forensic scanning technology, Smith and other U.K. researchers have uncovered new evidence that shows the world-famous Oxford dodo had a violent death. 
   
   "We noticed these serious metallic high-density particles embedded inside the specimen," researcher Mark Williams, of the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), told CBC News. 
   
   The skull of the Oxford dodo, housed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in the U.K. (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) 
   
   Williams is the first to scan the remains of the dodo using a high-resolution CT scan and software that created a 3D replica of the dodo's skull. 
   
   This technology allowed the researchers to see inside the specimen for the first time without actually damaging the centuries-old remains. 
   
   "When we were first asked to scan the dodo, we were hoping to study its anatomy and shed some new light on how it existed," Williams said. "In our wildest dreams we never expected to find what we did." 
   
   What they found was that the metallic particles were ammunition. 
   
   'Brutal way to go' 
   
   Williams said his team looked back at the data "and realized the pattern of these lead shots is in the back of the dodo's head. So clearly, when you look at it, he was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun." 
   
   He called it a "pretty brutal way to go." 
   
   "These birds were hunted to extinction. Their habitat was destroyed. When you look at the specimen like this one and see between 20 and 30 lead pellets embedded right in the skull, you are looking at a snapshot of its violent death," he said. 
   
   This is a scan image of the skull of the Oxford dodo. Researchers at the University of Warwick found particles in the skull, later identified as lead shot pellets. (WMG, University of Warwick) 
   
   Researchers had always assumed the nearly 400-year-old specimen had died of natural causes, its remains then transferred to the U.K. museum as an exhibit. Now they say they have proof the Oxford dodo was hunted down and killed. 
   
   Smith said it was a "really great surprise." 
   
   "The specimen that we thought we knew so well had lots ... of lead pellets embedded with the skin, embedded within the bone." 
   
   "Having small lead pellets to shoot game fowl only started at almost the same time as the bird became extinct," Williams said. "We could be looking at the first examples of lead shots ever used to hunt game birds." 
   
   Williams said the forensic work isn't done. He's hoping to do a chemical analysis of the lead pellets. 
   
   "Using those analyses, we may be able to trace which particular ore field the lead came from, and therefore what country it was mined in, and potentially what country the shot was made in so that we could then determine who killed the dodo," says Smith. 
   
   The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is the only museum in Canada that has a dodo skeletal display. It's been part of the museum's collection since 1938 and on display for the past 10 years. (Brian Boyle/Royal Ontario Museum) 
   
   His number one suspect? "I think there's a good chance this bird was either shot in its habitat or maybe even kept captive on a ship and shot for food." 
   
   Paleontologist Kevin Seymour says the murderer could have been anyone. 
   
   "It's kind of cool to know more information about that individual [dodo], but it isn't surprising that lots of people went to Mauritius and ate these animals," says Seymour, assistant curator of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto — the only museum in Canada with a dodo skeletal display. 
   
   "They were basically eaten to extinction. And that this one was shot isn't too surprising to me, that people went there and hunted them for food." 
   
   But Williams says he's dismayed by this latest discovery about the demise of the dodo, a flightless bird labelled — some say unfairly — as clumsy and dull-witted. 
   
   "Shock and sadness, really," says Williams. "This animal was extinct 60 years after it was discovered. In the blink of an eye, it was gone." ||||| Image copyright University of Warwick Image caption A dodo model on display in Oxford - the actual dodo remains are usually kept under lock and key 
   
   For a bird that has been extinct for more than 350 years, you probably think there is not much left to learn about the dodo. But you would be wrong, thanks to the latest research at the University of Warwick. 
   
   The specimen that the team based at WMG has been studying is a very famous dodo indeed. It belongs to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and it is so precious it is kept under lock and key. 
   
   From a scientific point of view it is interesting because what the museum has is a mummified foot and head. It is our most complete set of remains of a single dodo left in existence and the only dodo soft tissue to be found anywhere - and soft tissue can be used for DNA analysis. 
   
   Image copyright University of Warwick Image caption These are the best preserved remains of the dodo anywhere in the world 
   
   But it is also a literary dodo. This specimen fascinated Charles Dodgson (perhaps better known as Lewis Carroll) and also illustrator John Tenniel. Carroll would write the dodo into his book Alice in Wonderland and Tenniel would add his famous illustrations of the bird. 
   
   Killed by humans 
   
   Finally, of course, this dodo is also a symbol. A symbol of the terrible impact humanity can have on our environment. These large flightless birds lived happily on Mauritius until Dutch explorers arrived in 1598. Just over 150 years later they were extinct. Killed by humans, or more accurately by the rats and cats we brought with us that ate the young and the dodo eggs. 
   
   Oh yes, it was not hungry sailors who did for the plump dodo, contrary to popular opinion. In fact, the dodo was not even that plump - that is a misconception based on observations of fat, captive specimens and poorly stuffed dead ones. 
   
   There is a great article on the BBC website discussing the treatment of the science of the dodo after they were wiped out and it makes pretty grim reading. If nothing else it explains why our best dodo specimen is just a foot and a head. 
   
   Image copyright University of Warwick Image caption The University of Warwick has used the latest technology to scan the mummified dodo remains 
   
   A chance to put the Oxford dodo into the state-of-the-art scanners at WMG at Warwick University was not just an amazing opportunity, it was also a chance to right a historical scientific wrong - to treat the sad story of the demise of the dodo with a bit more respect this time around. 
   
   Higher power 
   
   Because the dodo is dead, the scanners the team was using could be cranked up to a higher power and better resolution than if they were being used on living tissue. The result is our most comprehensive look yet at this distant relative of the pigeon. 
   
   Image copyright University of Warwick Image caption Bird brain 
   
   First and most shocking discovery? We know what killed the Oxford dodo. Often assumed to be a captive specimen that probably died of ill treatment or disease rather than old age, it turns out the bird was actually shot in the back of the head and the neck. A number of lead shot pellets, typically used to hunt wildfowl during the 17th century, were found by the team. 
   
   Next, it might even be possible to tell which country produced the shot that actually killed the Oxford dodo. 
   
   The team also seems to be hinting at other discoveries yet to be announced. Perhaps finally after centuries of neglect, the dodo is getting the attention and respect it really deserves. ||||| Dodos went extinct more than 300 years ago, but scientists are only now opening up a cold case after learning that one of the birds — the prized dodo specimen that likely inspired author Lewis Carroll to create a dodo character in the 1865 book "Alice in Wonderland" — was brutally murdered. 
   
   After recently loading the famous dodo into a micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanner, researchers noticed that the scans showed weird fleck marks in the flightless bird's neck and the back of its head. 
   
   A closer inspection revealed that those flecks were tiny lead pellets, meaning that someone shot the dodo from behind, killing the wildfowl, the researchers announced Friday (April 20). [In Photos: The Famous Flightless Dodo] 
   
   The murderous finding came as a complete surprise, said Paul Smith, the director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England, where the dodo specimen — called the Oxford dodo — is on display. For years, curators thought that the specimen was the same bird that was brought to London in 1638, when the animal was still alive, Smith said. This famous dodo was a curiosity show, and people could pay to see and feed it. 
   
   A digital image created by the micro-CT scan of the famous Oxford dodo. Credit: WMG, University of Warwick 
   
   It was thought that the curiosity-show dodo died and the remains of its body was later acquired by John Tradescant the Elder, whose family provided the founding collection for the University of Oxford museums. But the great performing dodo was never shot (at least that we know of), which raises the question: Where did the Oxford dodo come from if it's not the same one that performed in the London curiosity show so many years ago? 
   
   "There is now a mystery regarding how the specimen came to be in Tradescant's collection," Smith told Live Science. The even greater mystery is, "Who killed the dodo?" Smith said. 
   
   Dodos (Raphus cucullatus) were native to Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Europeans first took notice of the bird when Dutch explorers found the animals in 1598. But after decades of hungry sailors eating the birds, habitat loss and invasive rats, cats, dogs and pigs eating their eggs, dodos went extinct on their native island in 1662. 
   
   The Oxford dodo is the only specimen in the world that still contains skin and other soft tissues with extractable DNA. In a 2002 study published in the journal Science, researchers examined this dodo's DNA and found that the bird is, indeed, a giant flightless pigeon whose closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon. 
   
   Researchers decided to study the Oxford dodo specimen again so they could get a better idea of how dodos fed and what they ate, Smith said. So, Oxford researchers coordinated with scientists at the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) in England, where the bird was micro-CT scanned. 
   
   The white dots on this digital image of the dodo's skull shows the location of the deadly lead pellets. Credit: WMG, University of Warwick 
   
   Curiously, the lead shot didn't penetrate the dodo's thick skull, the scans revealed. But these shots still killed the bird, the researchers said. 
   
   "This is a flightless bird, so obviously, somebody snuck up behind the poor thing and just shot it in the head," said Mark Williams, leader of the Product Evaluation Technologies and Metrology research groups at WMG, University of Warwick, who is studying the Oxford dodo. 
   
   Now that the cold case is open, the researchers plan to analyze the lead shot to see where it was mined. 
   
   "At the moment, we don't know where the bird was actually shot," Williams told Live Science. "Was it shot in the U.K.? More likely, was it shot in the Mauritius and then transferred to the U.K.? Was it shot for food on a ship? We really don't know." 
   
   Original article on Live Science.
target: – Scientists used the latest forensic scanning technology to look inside the world's most famous dodo specimen in the hope of learning more about the anatomy of the bird that went extinct on Mauritius 350 years ago. "In our wildest dreams we never expected to find what we did," says University of Warwick researcher Mark Williams. They uncovered what the CBC labels a "dodo whodunit." Though scientists had assumed the dodo kept at Oxford University Museum of Natural History died of natural causes, inside its mummified skull were 20 to 30 "metallic high-density particles" that left no doubt how the male bird met its end: "He was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun," Williams says, adding "we could be looking at the first examples of lead shots ever used to hunt game birds." Now begins the search for the culprit: Museum director Paul Smith says a chemical analysis of the lead pellets will hopefully reveal "what country the shot was made in so we could then determine who killed the dodo." The Oxford specimen—the most complete dodo to be found and the only one to contain soft tissue and viable DNA—was previously thought to be from a dodo displayed in London in 1638 before its natural death, per the Telegraph. "Was it shot in the UK? More likely, was it shot in the Mauritius and then transferred to the UK? Was it shot for food on a ship?" Williams wonders, per Live Science. The dodo was later acquired by King Charles II's gardener and passed to Oxford, where it is said to have inspired Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, reports the BBC. (Dodos shed their feathers.)