Extinction: Rethinking the dodo's demise, and could a supervolcano threaten humanity's future?

Around 8 million years ago, an underwater volcano just to the east of Madagascar formed the island of Mauritius. Pigeons on nearby islands set flight and settled on that island. There they continued to evolve, and the dodo bird eventually emerged as its own species: Raphus cucullatus. And tiny Mauritius, with an area of just 720 square miles, was the only place in the entire world where the dodo lived. And it lived a good life, among bats and tortoises and other birds, safe from the predators its ancestors left back on land millions of years before. But in 1598, when sailors from the Netherlands arrived, the dodo’s luck ran out.

On today's Tiny Matters we dive into the history of the bird that everyone loves to make fun of: the dodo. And we’re going to explore some of the work investigating why this bird went extinct and what it was like when it was alive. Then we’ll shift gears and talk about what some people worry will cause a massive extinction in the future — one that might include us: supervolcanoes. These are volcanoes capable of eruptions thousands of times larger than the volcanic eruptions we are most familiar with today. The recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland or the deadly Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 pale in comparison. These are volcanoes bigger than anything we've experienced as human beings in our recorded history. So are we ready if one comes our way?

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