PORT LOUIS, Dec 23: Scientists on Friday announced the discovery of huge cache of dodo bones from an apparent ‘mass grave’ of the extinct creatures on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, the only place on earth the flightless birds lived in the wild.

The Dutch-Mauritian research team uncovered more than more 700 specimens, including part of one dodo’s unusual beak and the bones of dodo chicks, believed to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old near a sugar plantation in a swampy area known as ‘Mare aux Songes’ on the southeastern corner of the island, they said.

“This new find will allow for the first scientific research into and reconstruction of the world in which the dodo lived, before western man landed on Mauritius and wiped out the species,” the team said in a statement released by the Dutch Natural History Museum. —AFP