Rare Dodo skeleton, now up for auction

This ultra-rare composite skeleton is expected to fetch Dh2,335,689 at auction later in November. Here’s what makes it so covetable.

The composite Dodo skeleton is 95 per cent complete. Courtesy Summers Place Auctions

This ultra-rare composite dodo skeleton is expected to fetch Dh2,335,689 at auction later in November. Here’s what makes it so covetable.

The composite dodo skeleton, which is 95 per cent complete, is being put under the hammer by the United Kingdom-based auction house Summers Place Auctions. It will be the first dodo skeleton to come up for sale since the early 20th century, and the first ever to be sold at auction.

A composite skeleton is one that is made up from bones that belonged to several different animals, and this particular composite skeleton is one of only a dozen that are relatively complete. At present, there is only one dodo skeleton in existence that is made up from the bones of a single animal.

This particular skeleton belongs to a private collector who spent the 1970s and 1980s purchasing dodo bones from private collections and auctions. It was only in the early 2000s, however, that he realised that he had enough bones to construct an almost complete skeleton, with only part of the skull and one set of claws missing (these were reconstructed).

The flightless bird, which was confined to the island of Mauritius, was first seen by Dutch sailors in 1598. The sailors ate the bird, which was easily caught, into extinction about 70 years after its discovery. The dodo is on a par with the Tyrannosaurus rex as an icon of extinction, and has also appeared in various cultural and literary contexts, including Lewis Carroll's classic book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The dodo skeleton is part of the fourth Evolution sale at Summers Place Auctions, scheduled for November 22. This is not the auction house’s first skeleton sale – it sold a Diplodocus dinosaur skeleton to the Natural History Museum of Denmark for £500,000 (Dh2,335,689) at the first Evolution sale in November 2013.

Since the inaugural Evolution sale, the auction house has achieved world-record prices for a number of specimens, but due to its rarity, the dodo skeleton is expected to surpass all previous sales.

Read this and more stories in Luxury magazine, out with The National on Thursday, November 3.