The Dodo Bird is Back

Noel Rowlands ‘28

Staff Writer

Grand advancements are being made to bring back the extinct Dodo Bird by Texas-based group, Colossal Bioscience. "We think it's still five to seven years out, but it's not 20 years out," stated Colossal Biosciences' Chief Executive Ben Lamm.

With successful past attempts in resurrection, Colossal Bioscience hopes to add Dodo birds to the list. Lamm continued, "Our goal is to make enough dodos with enough genetic diversity that we can put them back into the wild where they can truly thrive... we're not looking to make two dodos, we're looking to make thousands." Some experts oppose Colossal's approach to resurrecting a species that has been extinct for over almost 300 years, questioning whether this is even technically possible. Leonardo Campagna, an evolutionary biologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has many thoughts on this issue. "It's hard to know what it took to make a dodo genetically, from its genomic architecture to how its genes interacted with the environment.” 

A projected skeletal make-up of the extinct, Dodo bird.