In the footsteps of the bone collectors: nineteenth-century cave exploration on Rodrigues Island, Indian Ocean

For all of the nineteenth-century bone collectors working on Rodrigues, their main objective was to search the caves for specimens of the Solitaire <i>Pezophaps solitaria</i>, the sister taxon of the Dodo <i>Raphus cucullatus</i> of neighbouring Mauritius. Rodrigues Island has an extensive calcarenite plain in the southwest of the island, which contains numerous caves. A number of expeditions explored the area and excavated the caves, especially during the 1860s and 1870s, resulting in the discovery of thousands of subfossil bones. Some details of these activities were published, and some of the expedition explorers left manuscript reports, all of which provide clues as to where they were excavating. Here, we present the results of a modern attempt to reconstruct the movements of these expeditions and to discover which of the numerous caves were visited and excavated.

所有19世纪在罗德里格斯岛（Rodrigues）从事古生物标本采集的学者，其核心目标均为在洞穴中搜寻罗德里格斯孤鸽（Solitaire, *Pezophaps solitaria*）的骨骼标本——该物种是邻近毛里求斯的渡渡鸟（Dodo, *Raphus cucullatus*）的姊妹类群。罗德里格斯岛西南部分布有一片广袤的钙砂岩平原（calcarenite plain），区域内遍布大量洞穴。多支探险队曾对该区域展开考察并发掘洞穴，尤以19世纪60至70年代的活动最为集中，此次发掘共出土了数千件亚化石（subfossil）骨骼标本。这些探险活动的部分细节已公开发表，部分探险队员还留存有手稿报告，所有这些资料均为还原他们的发掘地点提供了关键线索。本文将呈现一项现代研究的成果：该研究旨在还原上述早期探险队的行动轨迹，并探明他们曾到访并发掘过的洞穴具体为哪些。