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Expiry dates

Nature volume 426, pages 235–236 (2003)Cite this article

The dodo is most certainly dead. But when did the species finally disappear? A statistical approach allows estimation of the date, and could be applied to other extinctions, both past and present.

In 1923, the USS Tanager landed a scientific expedition on Laysan, in the northwest Hawaiian Islands. Rabbits, introduced in the late 1800s, had reduced the native vegetation to a wasteland and the island's endemic honeycreeper, the Laysan `apapane, to a few individuals. During the 1923 visit, a strong storm blew through Laysan, whipping up the dust. When it settled, the honeycreepers were gone, with the time of the species' demise known to the day along with details of the causes of its decline and death. Partly recorded by an early film, the story of the birds' end is unique. Typically, however, we have only a vague idea of when a species goes extinct and the reasons why it did so. On page 245 of this issue, Roberts and Solow1 provide a method for estimating dates of extinction. Their application is for the most famous recent extinction of all — that of the dodo, discovered on Mauritius then driven to extinction in the seventeenth century.

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Figure 1: Humans set about the fauna of Mauritius.

JULIAN PENDER HUME/NHMPL

References

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  1. Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, 27708, North Carolina, USA

    Stuart Pimm

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Pimm, S. Expiry dates. Nature 426, 235–236 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/426235a

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