It is one of the most famous extinct animals of all time, ruthlessly exterminated by humans in just a few decades.
Now scientists are moving closer to returning the famous dodo to its original homeland of Mauritius, the island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
American startup Colossal Biosciences, based in Dallas, Texas, uses stem cell technology and genome editing to create a modern approach to the species.
At a cost of more than $225 million, it is ‘de-extincting’ the dodo more than 350 years after it was wiped out of Mauritius by European explorers.
And Colossal Biosciences doesn’t stop there: it also wants to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.
Scientists use stem cell technology to bring back extinct species – more than 350 years after it was wiped out
Most people believe the dodo was a fat, clumsy bird, but because it has been extinct since the late 17th century, no one knows exactly what the dodo looked like.
Colossal Biosciences is working with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to find a suitable location for the first herd of dodos once they are grown in the laboratory.
Before being exterminated in the 17th century, the flightless bird was endemic to the island’s forests.
“The dodo, a bird deeply intertwined with the DNA of Mauritius, is unfortunately also iconic because of the role humanity played in its extinction,” said Vikash Tatayah, director of conservation at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.
‘It also symbolizes efforts to prevent species extinction.
“We are so grateful for Colossal’s technologies and the promise of returning this iconic species, extinct since the 1680s, to its native environment.”
In preparation for releasing the regenerated dodos into the wild, the two partners will work together on “ecosystem restoration” through invasive species removal, revegetation and community awareness efforts.
Scientists have already accomplished the monumental feat of mapping the entire genome of the extinct species, from bone specimens and other fragments.
The next step is to gene editing the skin cell of a close living relative, which in the case of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon, so that its genome matches that of the extinct bird.
The goal is to match the genome to that of the extinct bird, or as close as possible, using the gene editing tool Crispr-Cas9.
This is a technique that can ‘cut and paste’ small pieces of DNA, meaning scientists can remove or edit certain genes so that they more accurately represent the animal they want to mimic.
This genetically modified cell must then be used to create an embryo – in a similar way to Dolly the Sheep in 1996 – and delivered into a living surrogate mother.
Scientists hope the chick that hatches from the egg will resemble something between the Nicobar pigeon and the dodo.
They aim for the first lab-grown dodo to be born within this decade.
Scientists want to bring the dodo to Mauritius, the island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean
The Nicobar Pigeon (pictured) is the closest living relative of the dodo, found in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India
The dodo gets its name from the Portuguese word for ‘fool’, after colonialists mocked its apparent lack of fear of human hunters
Discovered by Europeans in 1598, the dodo was a flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
The dodo gets its name from the Portuguese word for ‘fool’, after colonialists mocked its apparent lack of fear of human hunters.
It also became prey for cats, dogs and pigs brought by sailors exploring the Indian Ocean.
Because the species lived isolated in Mauritius for hundreds of years, the bird was fearless and its inability to fly made it easy prey.
The last confirmed sighting was in 1662, after Dutch sailors first noticed the species just 64 years earlier, in 1598.
Most people think the dodo was a fat, clumsy bird, but because it has been extinct since the late 17th century, no one knows exactly what the dodo looked like.
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History houses the only surviving remains of soft dodo tissue that exists anywhere in the world.
Scientists said the ‘Oxford dodo’ was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun.
Pictured is part of the ‘Oxford dodo’ – the only remaining remains of soft dodo tissue existing anywhere in the world
There is also a dodo skull in the Zoological Museum of the University of Copenhagen and an upper jaw in the National Museum in Prague.
Now these scarce fragments exist as a “symbol of human-induced extinction,” according to Colossal Biosciences.
“The dodo is a good example of a species that became extinct because we – humans – made it impossible for them to survive in their native habitat,” says Professor Beth Shapiro, lead paleogeneticist at the company.
‘I have focused my entire career on genetic advances in ancient DNA and am the first to completely sequence the dodo genome. I am pleased to be working with Colossal and the people of Mauritius on the extinction and eventual rewilding of the dodo.
‘I especially look forward to advancing genetic rescue tools focused on birds and bird conservation.’
Professor Shapiro relented that it won’t be easy to recreate a “living, breathing, real animal” in the form of the 3-foot-tall bird.
It was her team that sequenced the bird’s entire genome for the first time in March 2022, after struggling for years to find well-preserved DNA.
“Mammals are simpler,” says Professor Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“If I have a cell and it’s living in a dish in the lab and I edit it so that it has a little bit of dodo DNA in it, how can I transform that cell into a whole living, breathing, real animal?
However, the expert leading the dodo extinction project – paleogeneticist Beth Shapiro (pictured left) – warned that it would not be easy to recreate a “living, breathing, real animal” in the form of the flightless bird. Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal is right
‘The way we can do this is by cloning it, the same approach used to create Dolly the Sheep.
“But we don’t know how to do that in birds because of the complexity of their reproductive pathways.”
She added: ‘So there needs to be a different approach for birds and this is a very fundamental technological hurdle to bird extinction.
“There are groups working on different approaches to do that and I have no doubt we’ll get there, but it’s an extra hurdle for birds that we don’t have for mammals.”
Other experts have wondered whether the new creation would be a dodo at all.
“There’s no one around to teach the dodo how to be a dodo,” Mikkel Sinding, a paleogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, told me. Scientific American.
“You can completely edit the genome of something and say you’ve recreated a species, but is it really the species?”