Natural World
When was the last dodo seen?
1662 AD
The last widely accepted sighting of a living dodo dates to 1662 AD.
1 BC · 1 AD
Estimated range: 1662 AD to 1680 AD
Context
What happened?
The dodo was a flightless bird found only on Mauritius. After people reached the island, hunting, habitat change, and introduced animals placed pressure on a species that had evolved without mammalian predators.
Significance
Why it matters
The dodo’s disappearance became one of the best-known examples of human-associated extinction. Because surviving reports are incomplete, historians distinguish the commonly accepted 1662 sighting from debated later claims about when the species finally vanished.
Further reading
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