Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-207).

"The Dodo went from being newly discovered to extinction in little more than a century. This flightless, odd-looking bird was seen for the first time by Europeans and then annihilated by Europeans all between the early sixteenth and the second half of the seventeenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, all that remained of what Portuguese explorers called the "crazy bird" was a patchwork of tall tales, contradictory reports, incompatible illustrations, and a single dodo's skull and foot. The dodo had become, in short, an unsolvable puzzle, but a puzzle that persisted in art, literature, and scientific speculation." "In this remarkable book, Clara Pinto-Correia shows how the human intellect and the imagination prey on sketchy facts and images, and how missing pieces and incomplete lines are merged and fused to make a cohesive whole. By considering the incredibly strong hold of this bumbling and ungainly creature on our collective scientific and literary imagination, Pinto-Correia teaches us not just about the ill-fated bird from the island paradise of Mauritius, but about our own abiding need to make sense of the world around us."--Jacket.

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