A RARE dodo skeleton worth half a million pounds is to go up for auction next month.

The rare specimen is composed of fossilised and unfossilised bones from various dodo remains found in the Mauritian marshland Mare-aux-Songes by a naturalist active around the turn of the 19th century.

Etienne Thirioux devoted almost all of his spare time to reading natural science books and scouring the Mauritian countryside for biological treasures - among the most valuable of his finds were a number of dodo bones.

The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662.

The near-complete skeleton, expected to fetch between £400,000 and £600,000, is the only skeleton to have been assembled in the 19th century still in private hands.

Dr Julian Hume, an avian palaeontologist, said: "More has been written about the dodo than any other bird, a true icon of extinction, yet virtually nothing is known about it in life.

"Apart from a few bones, a handful of inadequate historical illustrations and accounts, and some 300 years after its demise, this emblematic bird continues to prompt wonder and debate."

First recorded by Dutch sailors on the island of Mauritius in 1598, the dodo was a flightless bird, standing about 30 inches tall, a distant relation of the pigeon family.

Less than a century after its discovery sightings of it ceased and with no fossil remains yet discovered, some nineteenth century scholars even doubted the existence of the Dodo.

Bridgwater Mercury: AS DEAD AS: A rare dodo skeleton worth half a million pounds is to go up for auction next month.The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. Picture: SWNSAS DEAD AS: A rare dodo skeleton worth half a million pounds is to go up for auction next month.The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. Picture: SWNS

Then in 1865 George Clark got permission to dig in a marsh in south east Mauritius called the Mare aux Songes, and it is from this excavation that the majority of sub-fossil remains come from.

The specimen will go under the hammer during Christie's Science and Natural History auction on May 24 along with a T-Rex tooth, an elephant bird egg, meteorites, and the largest swimming dinosaur fossil ever to be bid on.

Dating back 184 million years and measuring 138ins x 39ins (300cm x 100cm), the adult female ichthyosaur, an extinct marine reptile from the lower Jurassic period, is expected to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000 while the auction is expected to raise £2 million in total.

Bridgwater Mercury: JURASSIC: A Ichtyosaur skeleton - the largest swimming dinosaur fossil ever to be bid on. Picture: SWNSJURASSIC: A Ichtyosaur skeleton - the largest swimming dinosaur fossil ever to be bid on. Picture: SWNS

The skull of the ichthyosaur (above) shows the snout piercing into the underlying shale layers and the skull segment being preserved at almost a right angle to the long axis of the vertebral column.

This indicates the animal was embedded head-first as it fell to the sea floor, before the preservation of fossilisation occurred.

The marine reptile was also most likely pregnant at the time of her demise as the remains of two young skeletons were found inside her.

The small size of the two specimens speak strongly against them being preyed on by the larger ichthyosaur and points to them being embryos.

The first complete Ichthyosaur skeleton was found at Lyme Regis in 1811 by Mary Anning and the order Ichthyosauria was introduced in 1840 by Sir Richard Owen - today about 80 species are recognised.

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