Joint Anglo/Dutch rescue excavation of the Mare aux Songes fossil Dodo site, Mauritius

The Mare aux Songes of Mauritius is a marshy tract of land composed of peat deposits that, in the 1860's and later around 1910 yielded skeletal remains of the extinct dodo. This is the only site known to yield remains of this iconic bird. The site is about to be developed for tourism, including housing and a golf cause. consequently, the site will largely be destroyed and certainly will not be avaible for scientific investigation after August 2006. It iis our aim, in collaboration with Dutch archaeologists to collect from the site prior to its commercial development, and during the initial phase of development. This project is essentially a rescue dig. Man's impact on sensitive oceanic islands is well documented. The extinction of macrofauna, such as giant tortoises and flightless birds, has been a signature of man's island occupation since the Moari peoples reached New Zealand. Man reached Mauritius during the 16th century and in a short time both the dodo Raphus and the tortoise Cylindraspis have disappeared. Other fauna has also vanished, but documentary evidence for the presence of small vertebrates is lacking. It is the aim of this project to sample vertebrate fossils from the Mare aux Songes to enable us to better document the vertebrates prior to Man's arrival on the island. This will be achieved by undertaken a scientific 'archaeological' style excavation prior to the sites commercial development, and 'grab' collecting during the initial excavation phaes for the sites foundations (drainage ditches, sumps and footing excavations will provide important, but temporary stratigraphic sections, perhaps reaching levels not investigated by early workers. This will be the first attempt to obtain a stratigraphic section through the Mare aux Songes and will provide contextual data for previously collected material. This phase of the project is submitted under the Urgency Applications procedure. It is only concerned with the collection of field data and speciemns. It is not concerned with the analysis of the data. Support for this will be submitted under a normal small grant application, as per advice from NERC.