These ground-bound birds evolved to take advantage of an island ecology with no predators. The breast structure was insufficient to have ever supported flight. Dodos were very large birds, weighing about 23 kg (50 pounds). Nevertheless, from artists' renditions we know that the Dodo had blue-grey plumage, a 23-centimetre (9-inch) blackish hooked bill with a reddish point, very small wings, stout yellow legs, and a tuft of curly feathers high on its rear end. The decaying remnants of the last complete stuffed dodo, in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, was ordered to be burned by the museum's director in 1755 the foot and head were salvaged from this specimen, and are currently on display. Dublin's Natural History Museum had an assembled specimen, while the most intact remains from a single bird are a skeletal foot and a head, which contains the only known soft tissue remains of the species. Before this find, few dodo specimens were known. These findings were made public in December 2005 in the Naturalis in Leiden. In October 2005, an important site of dodo remains was found by Dutch researchers in Mauritius, including birds of various stages of maturity.
Whether the dodo and Rodriguez Solitaire were actually closest to the Nicobar Pigeon among the living birds or whether they are closer to other groups of the same radiation such as Ducula, Treron or Goura pigeons, the proposed relationship to the Nicobar Pigeon being an artifact of long branch attraction, is not clear at the moment. However, the proposed phylogeny is questionable as regards the relationships of other taxa and must be considered less than reliable pending further research all that can be said with certainty is that the ancestors of the didine birds were pigeons from Southeast Asia, which agrees with the origin of most of the Sahara's birds. The same study suggested that the Southeast Asian Nicobar Pigeon is the closest living relative of the dodo and the Rodriguez Solitaire. DNA sequence analysis suggests that the dodo's ancestors diverged from those of its closest known relative, the Rodriguez Solitaire (which is also extinct), about 25 million years ago, in the deserts of the middle east these birds reached their impressive size as a result of the subsequent isolation of their desert homes in accordance with Foster's rule. The dodo is a close relative of modern pigeons and doves. Dodo reconstruction reflecting new research at Oxford University Museum of Natural History
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