Christie’s in London will next week offer a decidedly bizarre lot: “a rare fragment of a dodo bone femur”, which is expected to sell for up to £15,000 (€17,600).
The international auctioneers said “this is believed to be the first dodo bone to come to auction since 1934”.
The dodo was a flightless bird first discovered by Dutch sailors in 1598 on the island of Mauritius but the creature was hunted to extinction within a hundred years and the last recorded sighting was in 1662.
The bird has fascinated scientists and naturalists ever since and the bone being auctioned "was almost certainly excavated in 1865" in Mauritius by George Clark, a natural history enthusiast.
The Travel, Science and Natural History sale at Christie's South Kensington on Wednesday also features a copy of
A New Dictionary of Natural History
published in London in 1785 which contains 100 hand-coloured plates, one of a dodo, £700-£1,000.
(€820-€1,172
).
– MP
