Why Dodo Bones Are Extra Scarce
In nearly a century, only twice have dodo remains come up for auction.
Last week, at Christie’s auction house in London, an anonymous buyer paid almost $625,000 for the skeleton of a dodo bird. More precisely, the buyer purchased a set of fossilized bones belonging to at least two different birds, dug up and assembled into a skeleton by collectors. The last such assemblage sold in 2016 for about $430,000. Before that, no dodo skeleton of any kind had been offered for public sale for nearly a century.
Even for a species that, famously, has been extinct for more than 350 years, dodo remains are scarce. The University of Oxford
