Andrea Bryan, age 10, of Eureka, Calif., for her question:

WAS THERE EVER A DODO BIRD?

About 300 years ago there was indeed a bird named the dodo. It was about the size of a large turkey. It had short legs, an enormous beak, stubby wings and a tuftlike tail with curly feathers. It could not fly.

The dodo lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. And European seamen killed the dodo for food while hogs, rats and dogs destroyed the bird's eggs.

The dodo is now an extinct bird. The last one died in about 1681 and about 100 years later, two related species, called solitaires, also died out.

The heads and feet of a few dodos are preserved in museums, but the solitaires are known only from pictures, from accounts of travelers, and from bones.