![]() ![]() I made a call to the safari park and they had a juvenile rhea that wasn’t developing properly. He got it from a safari park in Pennsylvania. It turns out he had made a taxidermy mount of a rhea several years previously. So actually, the rhea was the only bird that would do! As luck would have it, I asked a taxidermist friend what he would do to find a rhea skin. He thought about it and replied that ostrich feathers would have been too large and broad, emu feathers far too narrow and ‘hairy’ looking. When I had trouble finding a rhea, I asked whether I could expand my search to include an emu or ostrich. A 1602 illustration by Jacob Hoefnagel of a taxidermied dodo that belonged to the menagerie of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague.Īccording to Michael, the rhea is the closest living bird whose feathers most closely match the look of the bird in Hoefnagel’s painting. These sketches and the two paintings also give a sense for the dodo, though still large and bulky, was a more slender, “leggier” bird than traditionally depicted. We used it to sculpt the head, the dodo’s weird “hood”, and the beak’s fleshy connection to the head. Laerle’s illustration was made from direct observation of living and dead specimens. (National Archief, Den Haag, Archiveren van de Compagnieen op Oost-Indie0 Drawing made by Joris Joostensz Laerle in 1601 while visiting Mauritius Island on the Dutch ship, VOC Gelderland. Clusius mentions the blue spot on the lower bill near the yellow and black tip, and Sir Thomas Herbert (1634) also mentions that the bill has a yellow tip and likens the eyes to diamonds. Michael adds that the details of the Mughal painting fit with early written descriptions by Jacob Cornelisoon van Neck (1601) and Carolus Clusius (1605). I was guided to defer to this painting to color the dodo’s beak, face, and body. Therefore, the dodo is assumed to be shown with accurate colors and form. The dodo is shown among other birds depicted so accurately that the other bird species can be identified from the painting. He is not alone in thinking that the painting by Ustad Mansur is a good reference. Michael pointed me to some historical illustration from which to refer. (Institute for Eastern Studies, Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace, St. (Illustration by Michael Hanson.) An illustration of a live dodo from around 1625 by Ustad Mansur, a Mughal court painter. The traditional bird compared to a new, slimmer dodo. He showed me his illustration of what he thinks the dodo may have looked like. Michael is a very good artist and has spent much time reading, researching, and thinking about this bird. Kristof introduced me to ornithology PhD candidate Michael Hanson. The idea of taking this new thinking and producing a slimmer dodo model came from conversations with Collections Manager Kristof Zyskowski of the Peabody’s Division of Vertebrate Zoology Ornithology section. Traditionally depicted as a gigantic butterball turkey, the dodo is now thought to have been much slimmer, about twenty pounds lighter. Recent research on two almost complete skeletons, in South Africa and Mauritius, has changed the thinking about what this bird might have looked like. ![]() Little did they know that Peabody ornithologists had no better opinion of it than they did. While working in the galleries, I often saw group after group of kids run through the Connecticut Bird Hall to point and laugh at this model. The dodo exhibit was beloved by visitors. The dodo model on display at the Museum for, I’m guessing, 50 years, probably longer. My final project before retiring as the Yale Peabody Museum’s preparator has been to create a new model of the dodo for display in the renovated museum. ![]()
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