 Louis Etienne Thirioux , an amateur naturalist at Port Louis , also found many dodo remains around 1900 from several locations . They included the first articulated specimen , which is the first subfossil dodo skeleton found outside the Mare aux Songes , and the only remains of a juvenile specimen , a now lost tarsometatarsus . The former specimen was found in 1904 in a cave near Le Pouce mountain , and is the only known complete skeleton of an individual dodo . Thirioux donated the specimen to the Museum Desjardins ( now Natural History Museum at Mauritius Institute ) . Thrioux 's heirs sold a second mounted composite skeleton ( composed of at least two skeletons , with a mainly reconstructed skull ) to the Durban Museum of Natural Science in South Africa in 1918 . Together , these two skeletons represent the most completely known dodo remains , including bone elements previously unrecorded ( such as knee @-@ caps and various wing bones ) . Though some contemporary writers noted the importance of Thrioux 's specimens , they were not scientifically studied , and were largely forgotten until 2011 , when sought out by a group of researchers . The mounted skeletons were laser scanned , from which 3 @-@ D models were reconstructed , which became the basis of a 2016 monograph about the osteology of the dodo . In 2006 , explorers discovered a complete skeleton of a dodo in a lava cave in Mauritius . This was only the second associated skeleton of an individual specimen everfound , and the only one in recent times . 
