 The travel journal of the Dutch ship Gelderland ( 1601 – 1603 ) , rediscovered in the 1860s , contains the only known sketches of living or recently killed specimens drawn on Mauritius . They have been attributed to the professional artist Joris Joostensz Laerle , who also drew other now @-@ extinct Mauritian birds , and to a second , less refined artist . Apart from these sketches , it is unknown how many of the twenty or so 17th @-@ century illustrations of the dodos were drawn from life or from stuffed specimens , which affects their reliability . 
