Alas, poor Quagga! I knew him, Horatio.

August 27, 2009 2:57 PM

Photographs of extinct animals.
posted by shakespeherian (37 comments total)

Martha, the last of the Passenger Pigeons
posted by The otter lady at 3:15 PM on August 27 [3 favorites]

This is neat. But does it seem like a disproportionate number of these animals that have gone extinct since the advent of photography are striped? Or is it just me?
posted by ericost at 3:16 PM on August 27

Perhaps we've been destroying a lot of grass land since photography?
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:22 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

Wikilinks:
Extinct animals of all eras

List of extinct birds, mammals, and butterflies that went extinct in modern times (since the year year 1500 A.D./C.E.)

Lazarus taxon - In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a taxon that disappears from one or more periods of the fossil record, only to appear again later (Coelacanth being the most storied of these, even appearing in Animal Crossing =)

Elvis taxon - In paleontology, an Elvis taxon (plural Elvis taxa) is a taxon which has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution. This implies the extinction of the original taxon is real, and the two taxa are polyphyletic.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:25 PM on August 27 [3 favorites]

I was expecting pictures of burgers, steaks and kebabs.
posted by lemonfridge at 3:32 PM on August 27

This makes me grrrrrrrr a bit; it gives the impression that humans have made animals extinct in the past but that's all behind us now. What about the golden toad? Discovered 1966, extinct 2004. Or hundreds of other creatures that are on the lists filthy light thief suggested? Neat photos, but perhaps not because they animals are extinct.
posted by Peter Petridish at 3:37 PM on August 27

The Tasmanian Tiger was the best fucking animal ever.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:44 PM on August 27 [2 favorites]

In loving memory of The West African Black Rhinoceros
posted by DaddyNewt at 3:48 PM on August 27

The Tasmanian Tiger was the best fucking animal ever.

Of a long list of animals that fuck.
posted by bwg at 3:56 PM on August 27 [2 favorites]

it gives the impression that humans have made animals extinct in the past but that's all behind us now

*checks extinction tag*

ah yes...
posted by kliuless at 4:00 PM on August 27

posted by bwg The Tasmanian Tiger was the best fucking animal ever.

Well, it may have been good, but it really needed to focus on doing more of the fucking. If the Tasmanian Tiger had done more fucking, there would be a lot more of them around.
posted by mattdidthat at 4:11 PM on August 27

I made it through a few, but that's just heartbreakingly sad.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:14 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

Am I crazy or would the stripes of the Thylacine make for a cool looking paint job on a car?
posted by digsrus at 4:29 PM on August 27

This is a cool post. I wish there were more. Pictures, that is.
posted by OmieWise at 4:35 PM on August 27

Damn, the Bubal Hartebeest was splendid in a positively Seussian way.

.
posted by Ufez Jones at 4:49 PM on August 27

The wikipedia article seems to have a few photographs of passenger pigeons.
posted by dilettante at 4:51 PM on August 27

Okay, a few more pictures of passenger pigeons. I plead temporary illiteracy.
posted by dilettante at 4:52 PM on August 27

Can you revive an extinct animal? (NYT on the effort to "bring back" the quagga)
posted by naoko at 5:35 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

not so rare photos of Yangtze River Dolphin

And the Lazarus Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood)
posted by rough ashlar at 6:02 PM on August 27

Lists of extinct animals makes me ashamed to be human.
posted by benzenedream at 6:15 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

"The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced." [wiki]
posted by benzenedream at 6:28 PM on August 27

Extinctathon!
posted by furtive at 6:35 PM on August 27

That Tasmanian thylacine, wow, what a beast. Looks like a 50/50 cross between a dog and a cat, but it was neither... it was a marsupial! And thylacine, what an odd name: sounds like a drug, or a contact lens solution or something. And how 'bout those jaws? Whoa! He coulda gotten those all the way around a human head!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:05 PM on August 27 [2 favorites]

Every once in a while, we get a second chance?
posted by barrett caulk at 7:06 PM on August 27

What a wild-ass list.
posted by ORthey at 7:14 PM on August 27

I like how wildebeest and hartebeest look they've got one too many Es, maybe more.

People should go the whole hog and spell it wildebeeste. I do.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:33 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

A Bubal Hartebeest walks into a bar and the barman says "why the long face?"

I agree, Ufez Jones. What a stiking looking animal.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:44 PM on August 27

striking looking
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:44 PM on August 27

barrett caulk: Every once in a while, we get a second chance?

I'm optimistic, but I'd sure like to see more unambiguous evidence.

And imagine. . . we only missed the moa by a few hundred years. I'd sure like to see those litle birdies stomping around!
posted by Herodios at 7:53 PM on August 27

Second chances! While perusing Wikipedia today, I came upon an entry for the wisent... yes, that most stereotypical of American wild animals, the Buffalo, has a very close cousin that roamed the forests of England as recently as the twelfth century. Like the buffalo, the wisent has been successfully re-introduced to European forests.

Every day I live, the world becomes a little more strange and wonderful.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:15 PM on August 27

Thylacine in action!

Film 5 and Film 4 highly recommended.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 8:38 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

The Plague of Doves
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:42 PM on August 27

.
posted by limeonaire at 9:44 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

Lazarus taxon - In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a taxon that disappears from one or more periods of the fossil record, only to appear again later (Coelacanth being the most storied of these, even appearing in Animal Crossing =)

A Lazarus Taxon is also the name of the sweet Tortoise retrospective boxed set that came out a few years ago.
posted by grobstein at 10:00 PM on August 27

Andy Says:
August 27th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

I don’t know about the rest of you but that Quagaa looks delicious!
posted by Brocktoon at 6:23 AM on August 28

It is a curious fact that on Earth species death is, in the most literal sense, a way of life. No one knows how many species of organisms have existed since life began. Thirty billion is a commonly cited figure, but the number has been put as high as 4,000 billion. Whatever the actual total, 99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us. “To a first approximation,” as David Raup of the University of Chicago likes to say, “all species are extinct.” For complex organisms, the average lifespan of a species is only about four million years—roughly about where we are now.

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
posted by AceRock at 7:02 AM on August 28

I don’t know about the rest of you but that Quagaa looks delicious!

Sorry, no. I do not look delicious. And now you know.
posted by Herodios at 7:03 AM on August 28