The Oxford Dodo. Part 2: from curiosity to icon and its role in displays,education and research

The Tradescant or Oxford Dodo has played an important role in exhibition and education throughout its 360-year history, and has been the subject of scientific research reflecting changing interests and techniques over this time. Due to confusion over its relationships, its placement in the classification systems continually changed, until the dissection in 1847 of the head and foot confirmed its columbid (pigeons and doves) affinities. Here, we describe the dissection of the head and foot and the Tradescant Dodo’s display history, from the late nineteenth century until the present day, and also its use in education. We discuss the importance of the Tradescant Dodo to Lewis Carroll, whose ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ made the dodo aware to a worldwide audience. We further provide an overview of recent work including electron microscopic study of feathers, mDNA analysis, cytological investigation of the skin and measuring of the brain capacity, all of which have added to our knowledge of the evolution and ecology of this most extraordinary of birds. Research is ongoing; the Tradescant Dodo is presently subject to CT scanning and functional analysis. This is the second part of a two-part paper.     

Dead as a dodo: the fortuitous rise to fame of an extinction icon

Today, the Dodo is the most famous species known to have been driven to extinction through human activity. However, it disappeared over a century before Cuvier demonstrated the reality of extinction, and was only one of a huge number of species that died out following early European expansion around the globe. Unlike many other now-extinct Mascarene species, the Dodo's decline and disappearance was not documented by contemporary observers. Repeated settlement changes on Mauritius during the seventeenth century led to protracted ‘cultural amnesia’ over its very existence, and it was widely regarded as mythical by European scientists into the nineteenth century. A series of scientific and socio-cultural hurdles, which all had to be overcome before a given species could be widely appreciated by the general public as an icon of human-caused extinction, are identified and assessed in order to understand how the Dodo returned from scientific death and achieved its tremendous posthumous celebrity. This review indicates that although some ecological and evolutionary factors may have given the Dodo an increased chance of becoming famous, these factors are offset by a much greater series of serendipitous events, emphasising the importance of contingence and the fundamental lack of inevitability in historical processes.

The dodo was (perverse distinction) Immortalized by his extinction     

The dodo,the deer and a 1647 voyage to Japan

More has been written about the iconic Dodo Raphus cucullatus of Mauritius than any other extinct bird, yet despite its familiarity, only a few specimens were exported from Mauritius; individual birds reached Europe alive in 1626 and 1638 and at least two survived a journey to India in 1625. There are also vague records of other exported birds. Here, we provide confirmation based on seventeenth century documents that a live Dodo was sent to Japan in 1647, the last known captive bird, and comment on the details of its long and arduous voyage.     

A review of the historical evidence of the habitat of the Pine Marten in Cumbria

Place names and evidence from the literature show the Pine Marten (Martes martes) to have been well distributed in Cumbria until late in the nineteenth century, with a core area in the central fells. The habitat available to these martens is assessed and the species' status and the reasons for its decline reviewed. Despite the modern emphasis on the absolute importance of woodland to the Pine Marten, it is argued that historical Cumbrian populations survived successfully for many generations in highly fragmented habitats.     

Rooting the Dodo Raphus cucullatus Linnaeus 1758 and the Solitaire Pezophaps solitaria Gmelin 1789 within the Ornithurae: a cladistic reappraisal

Janoo, A. 2000. Rooting the Dodo Raphus cucullatus Linnaeus 1758 and the Solitaire Pezophaps solitaria Gmelin 1789 within the Omithurae: a cladistic reappraisal. Ostrich 71 (1 & 2): 323–329.

The phylogenetic positions of the dodo and the solitaire are studied in a cladistic framework, taking into consideration the columbiform assemblage and using outgroup comparison taxa from Gruiformes, Charadriiformes, Ciconiiformes and the Ardeidae. This preliminary analysis is based upon osteological characters retrieved from Verheyen's study of the Columbiformes, and from a detailed study of dodo and solitaire skeletons. The dodo and the solitaire are monophyletic corroborating the status of Raphidae. The Pteroclididae come out as a basal group to the strict columbiforms. A hierarchical arrangement of the columbids is proposed, but complete resolution was not obtained, suggesting the need for more detailed character study of the columbiform clade.     

Te Kupenga: Re‐casting entangled networks

The removal of objects from indigenous communities to private ownership, and sometimes to museums was clearly a one‐way path, with little consideration given to the effects of this displacement. After all, collection‐making was a serious enterprise and collections, as mutable sites, were pivotal in materialising compelling colonial discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recently, however, museums have engaged in negotiating the passage of object information back to their original communities. In an investigation of two individual taonga from the Mair collection, and in recasting tribal perspectives, surprising networks of interrelations are untangled, which reveal that ancestor agency materialised object‐people commitments that continue to be especially poignant for contemporary descendants.     

History of Ichnology: The Correspondence Between the Reverend Henry Duncan and the Reverend William Buckland and the Discovery of the First Vertebrate Footprints

The Reverend Henry Duncan (1774–1846), clergyman, philosopher, writer, politician, archeologist, poet, educator, social reformer, and the founder of savings banks, was indeed a Man for All Seasons. In 1824, while Minister of the Church of Scotland at Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, he was presented with a slab of red sandstone from the Corncockle Muir quarry in Annandale, exhibiting a set of footprints on it. Although Duncan felt from the start that he was dealing with the tracks of an animal, he wrote to the Reverend William Buckland, Reader in Mineralogy and Geology at the University of Oxford, to solicit his opinion on the origin of these curious markings. Buckland was at first skeptical, but after receiving casts of the markings from Duncan, he became convinced that they did in fact represent footprints. Duncan and Buckland maintained a correspondence about the footprints, and on January 7, 1828, Duncan described the Corncockle Muir footprints to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and quoted Buckland's findings. Duncan's paper was not published by the Society until 1831, but it aroused considerable interest—“Footsteps before the Flood”!—and was reported in several newspapers. This was the first scientific report of a fossil track; although a schoolboy, Pliny Moody, had found fossil footprints in Connecticut in 1802, they were not scientifically described until 1836. The Scottish tracks are now considered to be not reptilian but of synapsid origin and the rocks containing them are now known to be of Permian age.     

A Brief History of the Changing Occupations and Demographics of Coleopterists from the 18th Through the 20th Century

Systematic entomology flourished as a branch of Natural History from the 1750s to the end of the nineteenth century. During this interval, the “era of Heroic Entomology,” the majority of workers in the field were dedicated amateurs. This article traces the demographic and occupational shifts in entomology through this 150-year interval and into the early twentieth century. The survey is based on entomologists who studied beetles (Coleoptera), and who named sufficient numbers of species to have their own names abbreviated by subsequent taxonomists. In the eighteenth century, 27 entomologists achieved this level of prominence, of whom 37% were academics, 19% were doctors, 11% had private incomes, 19% were clergymen, and 8% were government officials. Many of those with private incomes were members of the European aristocracy, and all but one were European men. The nineteenth century list included 192 entomologists, of whom 17% were academics, 16% were museum curators, 2% were school teachers, 15% were doctors, 6% were military men, 7% were merchants, 2% were government entomologists, 6% had private incomes, 5% were clergymen, 5% were government officials, and 4% were lawyers. The demographics of entomology shifted dramatically in the nineteenth century. Whereas many of the noteworthy entomologists of the eighteenth century were German, Swedish, or French, in the nineteenth century, many more European countries are represented, and almost one-fifth of the noteworthy entomologists were from the United States. The nineteenth century list, like the eighteenth century list, contains no women. By the twentieth century, 63% of 178 noteworthy systematic entomologists were paid professionals, teaching entomology courses in universities, or studying insect taxonomy in museums and government-sponsored laboratories. Only one person on the twentieth century list had a private income, but women (ten individuals) were included on the list for the first time.     

The Reverend Henry Duncan (1774–1846) and the Discovery of the First Fossil Footprints

The Reverend Henry Duncan (1774–1846), clergyman, philosopher, writer, politician, archeologist, poet, educator, social reformer, and the founder of savings banks, was indeed a “Man for All Seasons.” In 1824, while Minister of the Church of Scotland at Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, he was presented with a slab of red sandstone from the Corncockle Muir quarry in Annandale, exhibiting a set of footprints. Although Duncan felt from the start that he was dealing with the tracks of an animal, he wrote to the Reverend William Buckland, Reader in Mineralogy and Geology at the University of Oxford, to solicit his opinion on the origin of these curious markings. Buckland was at first skeptical but, after receiving casts of the markings from Duncan, he became convinced that they did in fact represent footprints, urging Duncan to study and publish on what he considered to be a very important paleontological find. On January 7, 1828 Duncan described the Corncockle Muir footprints to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and quoted Buckland's findings. Duncan's paper was not published by the Society until 1831, but it aroused considerable interest and was reported in several newspapers. This represents the first scientific report of a fossil track.     

Accessory Food Factors: Understanding the Catalytic Function

Despite the practical knowledge throughout the nineteenth century that citrus fruit cured scurvy, and that rickets and beriberi were diseases caused by poor diet, it was not until 1901 that animal feeding experiments led one investigator to propose the existence of ‘accessory food factors,’ a lack of which was determined to be the cause of some illnesses (Hopkins, 1949. In Joseph Needham and E. Baldwin (eds.), Hopkins and Biochemistry, 1861–1947: Papers Concerning Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, O.M., P.R.S., with a Selection of His Addresses and a Bibliography of His Publications. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Ltd). The discovery of vitamins has long been considered as a delayed discovery. This delay has been attributed to the power of the germ theory in physiology at the time. While the germ theory and theories of auto-intoxication certainly played a role in delaying the discovery of vitamins, I argue further that it is important to consider the difference made to physiology by understanding the vitamins’ catalytic function. The profound difference made to physiology by the vitamins’ catalytic function suggests that a vitamin concept had previously been systematically inaccessible to researchers working within the conceptual framework of Bernardian physiology.     

From the southern right whale hunting decline to the humpback whaling expansion: a review of whale catch records in the tropical western South Atlantic Ocean

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Fossil Horses, Orthogenesis, and Communicating Evolution in Museums

The 55-million-year fossil record of horses (Family Equidae) has been frequently cited as a prime example of long-term macroevolution. In the second half of the nineteenth century, natural history museum exhibits characteristically depicted fossil horses to be a single, straight-line (orthogenetic) progression from ancestor to descendent. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, paleontologists realized that, rather than representing orthogenesis, the evolutionary pattern of fossil horses was more correctly characterized by a complexly branching phylogenetic tree. We conducted a systematic survey of 20 fossil horse exhibits from natural history museums in the United States. Our resulting data indicate that more than half (55%) of natural history museums today still depict horse evolution as orthogenetic, despite the fact that paleontologists have known for a century that the actual evolutionary pattern of the Family Equidae is branching. Depicting outmoded evolutionary patterns and concepts via museum exhibits, such as fossils horses exemplifying orthogenesis, not only communicates outmoded knowledge but also likely contributes to general misconceptions about evolution for natural history museum visitors.     

Does recent habitat fragmentation affect the population genetics of a heathland specialist, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Andrena fuscipes</Emphasis> (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae)?

Habitat fragmentation is believed to be a key threat to biodiversity as it decreases the probability of survival of populations, reduces gene flow among populations and increases the possibility of inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity within populations. Heathlands represent excellent systems to study fragmentation effects as the spatial and temporal course of fragmentation is well documented for these habitats. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, heathlands were widespread in northern Germany, but they became increasingly fragmented at the end of the nineteenth century until only few fragments had been left. As many insect species are strongly specialized on heathland habitats, they represent ideal study systems to test the genetic effects of such recent fragmentation processes. The solitary bee Andrena fuscipes is strongly specialized on heather (Calluna vulgaris) and, therefore, occurs exclusively in heathland habitats. The species is red-listed in Germany and other parts of Europe. Here, we present an analysis of the genetic structure of 12 populations of A. fuscipes using eight microsatellite loci. The populations showed little geographical structure and the degree of genetic differentiation was low. Compared to related bee species, inbreeding coefficients were relatively low and seem to be mainly affected by the bees’ solitary nesting behaviour.     

Alfred Nicholson Leeds and the first fossil egg attributed to a ‘saurian’

Discovered by the nineteenth century collector Alfred Nicholson Leeds, the first object to be described (1898) as a fossil reptile egg is a unique find from the Oxford Clay near Peterborough. It also comes from one of a very small number of Jurassic localities worldwide that can claim to have yielded a fossil egg. Given its historical and contemporary significance, this object is reassessed in the light of increased understanding of such objects. Data from scanning electron microscopy, computerised tomography, synchrotron imaging, X-ray diffraction and petrographic thin sectioning prove inconclusive. However, the presence of apparent external openings resembling angusticanaliculate pores – a pore type common only to certain types of dinosaur eggshell – in both size and sparseness of distribution prevents its summary dismissal as not being a dinosaurian egg.     

552. Senecio Paludosus

Summary.  The taxonomy, ecology and distribution of Senecio paludosus L. is discussed with particular reference to the English populations now recognised as belonging to subsp. angustifolius Holub. Extinct in England since the mid‐nineteenth century until it was rediscovered in 1972, the attempts at reintroduction are discussed and prospects for the future reviewed.     

In Pursuit of Safety: One-Hundred Years of Toxicological Risk Assessment

The publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring marks the mid-point in a century that saw, in its first half, the emergence of public health concerns related to human exposures to chemicals, and, in its second half, the emergence of public policies to deal with those concerns. Those policies made it imperative that the scientific community come to grips with the problem of identifying exposure levels not likely to cause harm. This problem was not significantly discussed within the scientific community until the 1950s, and well-described methods for practical solutions to it did not appear until the 1970s. An important report from the National Academy of Sciences, published in 1983 (Risk Assessment in the Federal Government), provided an analysis of these emerging methods, and recommended a useful framework for the assessment and management of risk. This framework remains central to public health and regulatory decision-making. A high-level perspective is offered on events leading to and following the 1983 report. The article describes early thinking about chemical toxicity and the scientific path that thinking followed through the 20th century, and to the present.     

The abacá plant and its fiber,Manila hemp

Production of Manila hemp, the world’s foremost cord-age fiber, was a Philippine monopoly from the early nineteenth century, when it was introduced into world trade, until 1930. Since then commercial plantings have been established in several other countries, but over 90% of all abacá production still comes from the Philippines. World production of the fiber in 1951 amounted to about 200,000 tons.     

The Chinese sleeper (Perccottus glenii Dybowski, 1877) in Ukraine: New data on distribution

The Chinese sleeper Perccottus glenii Dybowski, 1877 is one of the most successful alien species in Europe today. This article is a review of the current distribution of the species in Ukraine using published data, own field studies (2005–2016) and collections from museums and colleagues. The Chinese sleeper has been confirmed in the Vistula, Danube, Dniester, Southern Bug and Dnipro river basins, with earlier occurrence (1970s–90s) in the Vistula, Danube and Dniester river basins. As a result, the species is distributed more evenly in these river basins. The Chinese sleeper was first recorded in the Dnipro and Southern Bug river basins in the 21st century; hence, its occurrence is still irregular. Present data suggest that, in some regions, the species could inhabit not only floodplains and bays but also fluvial river sections.     

The way from medical to physiological chemistry at the University of G?ttingen, 1840-1940

In the nineteenth century chemistry was separated from medicine and reorganized as a "pure" academic science. Those left-over parts of chemistry that were more oriented towards medical application formed the nucleus of modern physiological chemistry, but could usually only exist in connection with other subjects. Especially the combination with physiology proved to be stable. Discipline building was delayed by the fact that a lot of physiologists resented a separation from physiology. Also in G?ttingen physiological chemistry was attributed to the Physiological Institute, but initially still had close connections with the General chemical Laboratory. At the end of the nineteenth century a first attempt to establish itself as a discipline together with hygiene failed. Physiological chemistry stayed a part of physiology until 1939 when the Institute of Physiological Chemistry was finally founded. The G?ttingen way is characteristic for the general establishment of the discipline in Germany.