Environment
Passenger pigeon discovery raises extinction awareness.
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By JENNA CHAPMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – The Michigan State University Museum has discovered something it didn’t know it
possessed – a full skeleton of a passenger pigeon. Visitors can even touch the rare skeleton of the now-extinct bird – in a digital form, said exhibit
curator Pamela Rasmussen. Viewers can enlarge and rotate the image of the skeleton on a touch
screen. The real skeleton is in a stuffed skin in the museum. It was found while researchers from the
museum worked with the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine to take computed tomography
scans of passenger pigeons to measure their bones. This is a rare occurrence, for most stuffed skins have few bones in them, Rasmussen said.