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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. The large, crested Choiseul Pigeon ( Microgoura meeki ) inhabited Choiseul and perhaps nearby islands in the Solomon Islands.