Dodo and its gizzard stone.
Image 20 of 29
Woodcut, after a drawing by Admiral Jacob Cornelius van Neck (first published in C. Clusius’s Exoticorum in 1605).
In: Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Historia Naturae (Antwerp, 1635).
The dodo, whose very name conjures up the concept of extinction, vanished by 1660 under intense pressure from hunting. Just as with the passenger pigeon in centuries to come, the dodo offered an easily obtainable source of food. The large flightless relative of the pigeon inhabited only the islands of Mauritius, leaving it vulnerable to the sailors who sought its flesh and eggs—and to the rats and dogs that the sailors introduced to the islands. This woodcut, made after a drawing from life, shows the soon-to-be doomed species with its gizzard stone.