The Dodo: Extinction in Paradise (Lost Worlds)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.25 (612 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1593730020 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 48 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-04-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The Dodo: Extinction in Paradise explores the science and the mythology, the history, archaeology, and legend, as well as the dodo's place in art and literature.. For the 17th-century sailors who arrived and settled on the island, they were easy to kill and as tasty as the turtles the sailors also caught and ate. Over millions of years they lost their instinct for danger. Unlike these, however, the dodo was the first recorded example of an extinction that was, in all probability, entirely caused by humans. They also lost the ability to fly, and grew bulky with sturdy running legs. The sailors introduced domestic animals and rat as well, competitors for the dodos' habitat. The story of the dodo is a classic of evolution and extinction equal in fascination to that of the dinosaur or the saber-toothed tiger. The pigeons colonized an island paradise abundant with food, free of any terrestrial mammalian predators. The giant pigeon, for this was what the dodo was, evolved from ancestors that had populated the island millions of years before in the Pleistocene period, when Mauritius was far adrift of where it lies today. Humankind coexisted with the dodo between 1598 and 1681 and then the dodo was gone, hunted to extinction, unable to escape the new pred
A Beautiful History of Extinction's Emblem Rob Hardy "As dead as a dodo." Everyone knows the phrase (and it is far clearer than the obscure doornail variant). The dodo is universally acknowledged as a symbol of extinction, not just a dead bird, not just a dead species, but an emblem of wipeout. Although everyone knows the dodo, we know almost nothing about it. It was discovered and wiped out long before the days of scientific observation. Errol Fuller has told us just about everything there is to know about the bird in _Dodo: A Brief History_ (HarperCollins). It is not as big or lush a volume as the one he produced on a. "A vapid performance" according to A Customer. Visually this book is stunning. Informative it is. But if you found a book about dinosaurs that said "we know almost nothing about them, except that there are no dinosaurs today" would you be interested? This is how Fuller starts his commentary on the dodo - "We know almost nothing." dodos equal famous dinosaurs. The moral of the whole book is, "here are the facts but we don't really know and we can't either so there". In its attempt to be critical and parsimonious, it trips over itself in a mess of contradictions (was the Dodo grey or brown? - "it seems to have been . "Decent Reference to Everything Dodo" according to Andy Proctor. As past reviewers have mentioned, this book is visually stunning. A very good entry level book to give a historical background on records, sketches, semi-factiods, and assumptions. Fuller makes it very clear (time and time again) that everything we think we know about the dodo is based on written records or sketches. Fuller also points out that we don't have complete facts on the legitimacy of any of the accounts. For example, some written accounts were taken from a boat that traveled by the islandthe accountee not even stepping foot on the island. Furthermore, the re
As amateur naturalist Fuller points out in this precise, charming and beautifully illustrated volume, of all extinct beasts none, except perhaps a few dinos, grip the imagination like the chubby, swan-sized, flightless bird (a type of pigeon in fact) that Europeans first encountered on its island home of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, in 1598, and that was gone forever only 90 years later (a victim most likely of European predators both human and animal). . From Publishers Weekly Rarely have humans ruminated so much about so little, as in the case of the dodo. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Yet the dodo is wildly popular, mostly as an "icon of extinction," first spurred to prominence, Fuller explains, by Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and n