Post by Melanie on Jul 9, 2008 1:41:42 GMT
on until 1987; they included a bone described by Cowles (1987) as from a stork (Ciconia
sp.). Further excavations resulted in more Ciconiiform bones which were assigned by Mourer
and Moutou (1987) to a new and extinct species of ibis (Borbonibis latipes); Cowles (1994)
subsequently confi rmed that his “stork” bone belonged to this ibis. The 1987 publication
prompted one of us (ASC) to suggest to François Moutou, one of the co-authors, that the
new ibis was in fact the solitaire of the old accounts.24 However it was not until 1995 that
they confi rmed this identity in print, adopting Sélys-Longchamps’ specifi c epithet solitarius,
and re-assigning the bird to the sacred ibis genus Threskiornis (Mourer et alii, 1995a, 1995b,
1999). Despite intensive searches in recent years (Mourer et alii, 1999) no dodo-type bones
have been found, but this has not prevented some authors from using the white dodo pictures
to maintain a belief (Gibbs et alii, 2001) or a hope (Fuller, 2001, 2002) that there was also
a dodo on Réunion"
Source: The white dodo of Réunion Island: unravelling a scientific and historical myth
JULIAN PENDER HUMEA and ANTHONY S. CHEKE
www.dodobooks.com/files/Hume&Cheke2004WhiteDodoNoIllus.pdf
