In the end, every visible part of the mount, except its glass eyes, will come from Lonesome George's remains. BeckettĪt the Wildlife Preservations studio, Dante is several weeks into a process that is likely to take six or seven months. This large carnivorous marsupial is also called a Tasmanian wolf or tiger. When Lonesome George died in June 2012, he was estimated to be about 100 years old.Ī mounted, extinct thylacine that is currently traveling with the American Museum of Natural History’s Extreme Mammals exhibition. Attempts to get him to mate were unsuccessful, and he became a conservation icon and an embodiment of humans' impact on the natural world. He was first spotted alone on La Pinta Island in 1971. Meanwhile, Lonesome George's well-documented story took place in recent times. "No one thought to set them aside for future generations." "One of the big reasons there are so few remains of dodos is because people loved to eat them," said Chris Raxworthy, associate curator of herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History. Research for the model revealed that reliable descriptions and depictions of the dodo are scant, according to a description of the project published in 2007 in the taxidermy-focused Breakthrough magazine. Seafarers' introduction of invasive species, such as goats and rats, also contributed to these formerly isolated animals' doom. Like giant tortoises living on the Galapagos Islands, the dodos (Raphus cucullatus) that lived on Mauritius provided food for sailors. Dante worked with Phil Fraley Productions to re-create the dodo, commissioned in 2005 for a museum in Singapore. George Dante paints a scientifically accurate model of a dodo. But neither Dante nor any other taxidermist has ever worked on an original dodo specimen. "It's not like flipping through a book or clicking online."ĭante has restored specimens of other extinct species, including the passenger pigeon, the thylacine (a large, carnivorous marsupial that lived in Tasmania), the Carolina parakeet and others. "I think there is a very powerful moment when you come face-to-face with a piece of taxidermy of an extinct species," said George Dante, a taxidermist and president of Wildlife Preservations, the company working on the Lonesome George mount. After Lonesome George's mount is complete, New York's American Museum of Natural History expects to display it before sending it back to the tortoise's native Galapagos. More than a year after his death, Lonesome George's remains are now in Woodland Park, N.J., where a team of taxidermists is working to preserve his physical presence by making a mount from his skin, shell and other external parts.
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