A rare dodo bone went under the hammer for £23,000 at the sale of an eccentric naturalist’s collection.

It was owned by Ralfe Whistler (1930-2023), who lived in Dodo House in Hastings, a veritable shrine to the long-extinct bird. 

On Tuesday, a selection of bones and books from his vast collection of dodo paraphernalia went under the hammer at Summers Place Auction in Billingshurst.

The rarest of the bones, a scapular coracoid, went for £23,000. The bone is “virtually unique in the bird world” and was the first discovered by schoolteacher George Clark in Mauritius in 1900. The bone was sold along with a letter from George’s daughter Edith Clark to Thomas Parkin, detailing her father’s discovery of the bone and how it inspired him to search for others.

The bone went for more than double the valuation Summers Place owner Rupert van der Werff had placed on it.

He said: “I made a valuation of £8,000 to £10,000 but how do you put a value on something which is unique like that? It’s why auctions are such good vehicles, because they let people decide what something is worth.”

The bone was sold along with a letter from Edith Clark to Thomas ParkinThe bone was sold along with a letter from Edith Clark to Thomas Parkin (Image: Gareth Fuller/PA) The discovery coincided with the publication of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, a story which featured a dodo, and this coincidence catapulted the extinct bird to super-stardom in the popular imagination.

 The bones had all been found by a local schoolteacher named George Clark and most were quickly sent to London and Paris for auction, from where they soon passed into museum collections. Clark kept a few for himself and over 20 years later two of his daughters, who had moved to Hastings, contacted a local collector, Thomas Parkin, for help in disposing of what they had left.

Parkin bought several of the bones and passed them on to his friend, ornithologist Hugh Whistler. Shortly before his death, Hugh gave the bones to his son Ralfe in whom they inspired a lifelong obsession with the dodo.

Two pairs of bones and a single bone went for £9,000, £4,000 and £2,000 respectively.

The bulk of Ralfe’s collection, which includes dodo memorabilia ranging from soft toys to a clock, also went under the hammer.