Housed at Oxford, a mummified head and foot are the only surviving dodo soft tissues on Earth—every other specimen globally is just bone or cast. This skin and tissue from the bird, hunted to extinction in the late 1600s, is so well-preserved that researchers sequenced its DNA in 2002, confirming its closest living relative is the pigeon.
Intriguingly, 2018 CT scans showed the dodo was shot in the head with 17th-century lead pellets, though they did not penetrate its skull. This sparked a mystery: if it was a live London exhibit as long believed, why shoot it? If shot in Mauritius, how did it survive the long voyage to England intact without modern preservation? Today, one side of the head is dissected to reveal the skull.
Adding to its legacy, this specimen is believed to have inspired the Dodo in Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—making this haunting artifact the ultimate, singular bridge to a lost species.