Dodo (skeleton) makes an appearance in Lausanne

Robin Marchant, a curator at Lausanne's Cantonal Zoology Museum, shows off a rare dodo skeleton that was recently restored and mounted for public display Keystone

A rare dodo skeleton, which has been completely restored, has gone on show at Lausanne’s Cantonal Museum of Zoology.

Specialists restored the bird’s individual bones, which the museum has held for over a century, and put them together to form a 60-centimetre long skeleton.

“Only a handful of museums around the world have skeletons this complete,” explained Robert Marchant, the museum’s curator of geology and palaeontology, on Thursday.

Dodos were flightless birds that grew to a height of about one metre. They are believed to have weighed 10-20kg.

First seen by Dutch sailors in 1598, the dodo lived only on the island of Mauritius and became extinct 70 years or so after its discovery. The vast majority of dodo bones were found in the Mare aux Songes swamp in the 19th century.

The Lausanne museumExternal link received 50 dodo bones from the owner of the main dodo site in Mauritius in 1907. Previously, the bones were not mounted into a skeleton for public display but kept separately and were relatively inaccessible to the public.