English: A Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) - on the left - reconstructions and a Réunion Island dodo (Raphus solitarius - invalid taxon) - on the right - model at the Natural History Museum in London, England.

The Réunion Island dodo was a scientific mystery for centuries. Seventeenth-century paintings based on travellers' tales showed a white bird from Réunion Island that many assumed was a relative of the dodo, which lived on neighbouring Mauritius.

Based on recent fossil discoveries, scientists have now realised that the accounts actually recorded the now extinct Réunion Island ibis (Threskiornis solitarius) - a long-necked, largely white bird, similar to the sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus). Hence, the reconstructed creature on this picture is actually a model of a bird that never existed, based on the misinterpretation of one that did.