LONDON.- Christie’s announced the sale of a near-complete Dodo skeleton from Mauritius, dated before 1690 (estimate: £400,000-£600,000) during Christie’s Science and Natural History auction on 24 May 2019. Rare and in great condition, this skeleton is composed of fossillised bones from various dodo remains found in the Mauritian marshland Mare-aux-Songes, combined with rare unfossilised bones found by Etienne Thirioux, a Mauritian naturalist active around the turn of the 19th century. This specimen is the only near-complete skeleton to have been assembled in the 19th century still in private hands. Further highlights of the auction include an important and fully adult ichthyosaur, the largest swimming dinosaur fossil ever offered at auction (estimate: £300,000 - £500,000), alongside a T-Rex tooth, an elephant bird egg, as well as an important array of meteorites and science instruments. The sale is expected to realise in excess of £2 Million.

THE DODO BIRD
Dr. Julian Hume - Avian Palaeontologist, comments – ‘More has been written about the dodo than any other bird, a true icon of extinction, yet virtually nothing is known about it in life. Apart from a few bones, a handful of inadequate historical illustrations and accounts, and some 300 years after its demise, this emblematic bird continues to prompt wonder and debate.’

First recorded by Dutch sailors on the island of Mauritius in 1598, the Dodo was a flightless bird, standing about 30 inches tall, a distant relation of the pigeon family. Less than a century after its discovery sightings of it ceased. With no fossil remains yet discovered, some nineteenth century scholars even doubted the existence of the Dodo. Then in 1865 George Clark (1807-73) obtained permission to dig in a marsh in south-east Mauritius called the Mare aux Songes, and it is from this excavation that the majority of sub-fossil remains derive.

Rarely offered at auction, this is an opportunity not to miss for discerning collectors and natural history enthusiasts to acquire an important piece of history and one of the most iconic birds ever to have lived.

AN ICHTHYOSAUR FROM THE AGE OF THE DINOSAURS
Measuring 350 x 100cm, a complete and articulated skeleton of a female Stenopterygius quadriscissus, also known as an ichthyosaur from the lower Jurassic (circa 184 million years ago), is another leading highlight of the auction and the largest fossil ever offered at Christie’s (estimate: £300,000-500,000). The skull of this ichthyosaur shows the snout piercing into the underlying shale layers and the skull segment being preserved at almost a right angle to the long axis of the vertebral column. This indicates the animal was embedded head-first in the soupy substrate of sediment as it fell to the sea floor, before the preservation of fossilization occurred. Well-preserved and in good articulation, this monumental fossil is a very rarely seen example where the remains of two small juvenile skeletons occurs. Their good articulation and the small size of the specimen speak strongly against the juveniles being preyed on by the larger ichthyosaur and favours the interpretation as embryos.

The first complete Ichthyosaur skeleton was found at Lyme Regis in 1811 by Mary Anning (of "she sells sea-shells on the seashore" fame). The order Ichthyosauria was introduced in 1840 by Sir Richard Owen, and today about 80 species are recognised. They take their name from the Greek for "fish lizards" and are an excellent example of convergent evolution. It is thought that they evolved from land-based lizards moving into the sea, eventually converging on the shape of the fish upon which they preyed.