For National Geographic magazine Deleo was asked to create an illustration to accompany an article about the dodo, in which paleontologist Leon Claessens states that the dodo was not so much a stupid and clumsy animal, but rather a very unlucky one. The title of the article: “The tragic fate of the Dodo”

Deleo tried to determine how the bird, that went extinct more than 300 years ago, must have looked like. Few contemporary paintings and drawings of the animal survived. Most of the artists, just like Deleo, had never seen a living species. His version also blends fact and fiction.

In the painting that Deleo made, the (flightless) bird frozen in mid air, refers to it’s seemingly inevitable extinction. The egg, held up very carefully by the bird, symbolizes the struggle for survival (and the revival attempts by humans). Remains of the egg are considered to be the holy grail in Dodo research, and have, until now, never been found.

The posture of the extinct bird deliberately resembles that of a famous found fossil of an Archaeopteryx, an avian dinosaur that also went extinct. The upside down position brings also the still life seventeenth century paintings with hunting trophies to mind for the extinction of the dodo, unlike the disappearance of the archeopteryx, is entirely due to human interference (directly or indirectly).

The final artwork, painted with acrylics, has been published in the October 2023 edition of the Dutch version of the magazine. A video showing the process of creating the artwork can be seen here.