Elephant Bird (Aepyornis)

     Elephant birds were among the heaviest birds that have ever existed. Following the extinction of the last dinosaurs 65 million years ago, the mighty reptiles that had dominated the earth for more than 160 million years, the long overshadowed birds and mammals evolved into a great variety of new species, some of which gave rise to giants like the elephant bird. In their general appearance, elephant birds were similar to the fiightless birds called “ratites” with which...

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Warrah (Dusicyon australis)

   Remote and treeless, the Falkland Islands is a small archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean. Ravaged by incessant winds and terrible winter storms, these islands are a very harsh environment. Although the Falklands are a welcome refuge for marine animals such as penguins, seals, and sea lions, very few land animals have managed to make a living on this stark, oceanic outpost. The only mammals known from the Falkland Islands are a small species of mouse and a mysterious dog, the warrah,...

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Tarpan (Equus ferus)

  It may come as a surprise, but the domestication of the horse stands out as one of the most signifi  cant moments in human history. This seemingly insignifi  cant event changed the way we lived forever. It enabled our ancestors to travel quickly over huge distances, and they harnessed the strength and tenacity of these animals to do tasks that previously required several men. Also, when the useful life of the horse was over, its flesh provided sustenance and its skin, bones,...

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Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli)

 Rising to heights of around 300 m, Stephens Island looms off   the northernmost tip of Marlborough Sound on South Island of New Zealand. The island is tiny (2.6 km2), but it is a refuge for many animals that have disappeared from the mainland since the arrival of Polynesians. On this prominent lump of rock, there once lived a small bird known as the Stephens Island wren. This bird was unrelated to the familiar wrens of the Northern Hemisphere and actually belonged to a small group of...

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Quelili (Caracara lutosa)

  Two hundred and forty miles off the northwest coast of Mexico lies the island of Guadalupe, a small volcanic island, 35 km long and about 9 km at its widest point. Even though it is barely a speck in the vastness of the Pacifi  c Ocean, Guadalupe was once home to a number of animals that were found nowhere else. One of the most famous Guadalupe residents was the quelili. This bird of prey was very closely related to the caracaras of Central and South America, and perhaps the ancestors...

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Pig-Footed Bandicoot (Chaeropus ecaudatus)

    Australia was once home to a unique collection of beasts, including giant marsupials and fearsome reptiles. However, scurrying around the big feet of this megafauna were a huge number of small marsupials that evolved to fill most of the ecological niches occupied by placental mammals in other parts of the world. There were rabbitlike marsupials, tiny mouselike animals, even a marsupial equivalent of a mole, to name but a few. Some of these animals can still be found today, but...

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Rocky Mountain Locust (Melanoplus spretus)

In the late nineteenth century, much of the United States was a frontier where people sought to realize their American dream, and many of them headed to the vast prairies of this continent. The term prairie conjures up images of beautiful, undulating plains stretching as far as the eye can see, yet this image is not altogether accurate. In the winter, these plains get bitterly cold, and in the summer, they are blistering hot. Add to this an almost perpetual wind, and what you get is an unforgiving...

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Eskimo Curlew ( Numenius borealis)

The story of the Eskimo curlew is a sad tale of greed and senseless waste and a perfect example of how destructive our species can be. The Eskimo curlew was a small wading bird, no more than 30 cm long, with an elegant, 5-cm-long beak. Like the other curlew species, the Eskimo curlew had a distinctive, beautiful call, and the Inuit name for this bird,  pi-pi-pi-uk,  is an imitation of the sound they made on the wing and on the ground.  The Eskimo curlew may have been a small bird,...

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Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus)

Another victim of the amphibian disaster was a fascinating little frog from Australia that was only discovered in 1973, yet by 1981, it had vanished without a trace.  The gastric-brooding frog was a small species; females were around 5 cm long, while males were smaller, at approximately 4 cm. It lived in forest streams and rocky pools, and for much of the time, it would hide beneath rocks on the bed of these water bodies, but when it left these rocky refuges and moved out into the fast-?owing...

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Woolly Rhino

The external appearance of Woolly rhinos is known from mummified individuals from Siberia as well as cave paintings. An adult woolly rhinoceros was 3.7 metres (12 feet) in length, and 2 to 3 tons on average, but they could probably grow to 4.3 - 4.4 meters (over 14 feet) at the largest. This is more than the modern white rhino. The Woolly rhinoceros could grow up to be 2 meters tall. Two horns on the skull were made of keratin, the anterior horn being 1 metre (3 feet) in length, with a smaller...

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Pantylus

Pantylus is an extinct lepospondyl amphibian from the Permian period of North America.Pantylus was probably a largely terrestrial animal, judging from its well-built legs. It was about 25 centimetres (10 in) long, and resembled a lizard with a large skull and short limbs. It had numerous blunt teeth, and probably chased after invertebrate prey. Source: Wikipe...

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Kuehneosaurus

Kuehneosaurus is an extinct genus of Late Triassic reptile from the United Kingdom. Measuring 72 centimetres long (2.3 feet), it had "wings" formed from ribs which jutted out from its body by as much as 14.3 cm, connected by a membrane which allowed it to slow its descent when jumping from trees. It is a member of a family of gliding reptiles, the Kuehneosauridae, within the larger group Lepidosauromorpha, which also contains...

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Lesser Bilby

Since its discovery in 1887, the species was rarely seen or collected and remained relatively unknown to science. In 1931 Finlayson encountered many of then near Cooncherie Station, collecting 12 live specimens. Although according to Finlayson this animal was abundant in that area, these were the last Lesser Bilbies to be collected alive.The last specimen ever found was a skull picked up below a Wedge-tailed Eagle's nest in 1967 at Steele Gap in the Simpson Desert, North West Territorry. The...

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Steller’s Sea Cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas)

     In 1741, the  St. Peter,  captained by Vitus Bering, departed from Kamchatka. The mission was to find an eastern passage to North America. On board was a 32-year-old German by the name of Georg Wilhelm Steller, who was the ship’s offi cial mineralogist. Steller also happened to be a physician and a very keen naturalist. His journey on the ship through the Bering Sea would be a remarkable one, on which he would make many zoological discoveries. Steller diligently...

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Labrador Duck

The Labrador Duck was also known as a Pied Duck, a vernacular name that it shared with the Surf Scoter and theCommon Goldeneye (and even the American Oystercatcher), a fact that has led to difficulties in interpreting old records of these species, and also as Skunk Duck. Both names refer to the male's striking white/black piebald coloration. Yet another common name was Sand Shoal Duck, referring to its habit of feeding in shallow water. The closest evolutionary relatives...

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Huia

The Huia was found throughout the North Island before humans arrived in New Zealand. The Māori arrived around 800 years ago, and by the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s, habitat destruction and hunting had reduced the bird's range to the southern North Island. However, Māori hunting pressures on the Huia were limited to some extent by traditional protocols. The hunting season was from May to July when the bird's plumage was in prime condition, while a rāhui (hunting ban)...

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If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at bale.candaba@gmail.com.  At www.worldextinctanimals.blogspot.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by www.worldextinctanimals.blogspot.com and how it is used.  Log Files Like many other Web sites, www.worldextinctanimals.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses,...

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Diplocaulus

The weirdest species the team has found in the Red Beds is the ?Boomerang Head,? or, as it's officially known, the species Diplocaulus, meaning "two tailed," a reference to its double-spined tail bones. It has an extrememly odd-looking body, with a flattened body and legs. The head, however, is pulled out to the sides in the shape of a boomerang - so extremely that by adulthood, the head could be 4 to 6 times wider than it was long. It was armor plated as well, with extremely strong jaws. Some...

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