 This view was met with ridicule, but later supported by Strickland and Melville, who suggested the common descent of the Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo in 1848, after dissecting the only known dodo specimen with soft tissue and comparing it with the few solitaire remains then available.Strickland stated that although not identical, these birds shared many distinguishing features in the leg bones, features which were otherwise known only in pigeons.The raphines are sometimes separated as a distinct family Raphidae, and their affinities were for long uncertain.