But a taxidermied specimen from 1989 proves that they were around much longer than anybody thought. Locals who spotted the dead animal on the side of the road stuffed it and kept it at home until recently when they handed it over to the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
We Thought This Tiny Deer Like Animal Was Extinct For Almost 30 Years New Scientist
Yet very occasionally an animal we believed to be extinct miraculously shows its face once more often hundreds if not thousands of years after we presumed it to be gone.
Animals that were thought to be extinct. Just 17 were found and in 1980 the species was declared extinct in the wild. A record number of baby Siamese crocodiles once thought to be extinct were spotted in the wild in Cambodia and after not being seen for 150 years the UKs large blue butterflies. Extinct in 1620 rediscovery in 1951.
The list of petrels once thought extinct but since rediscovered includes. Some of the most famous examples of bygone animals include the Tasmanian tiger the dodo the woolly mammoth and the sabre-tooth cat. To many coelacanths are the poster children of species we thought were extinct.
This Darwinian darling once again graced us with the knowledge of its presence off the coast of South Africa in 1938 a whopping 66 million years after it was thought to have retired. Wikimedia Commons The black and white New Zealand storm petrel was thought to be extinct for more than 150 years when bird watchers discovered one in 2003 near the Mercury Islands. Eastern quolls were thought to have gone extinct on the Australian mainland more than 50 years ago.
The initial find made headlines worldwide and with good reason. Species that no longer exist vastly outnumber those that currently populate the planet but occasionally we rediscover a species we thought was extinctWere. The name that researchers themselves have given these lost-and-found marvels is Lazarus species as they seem to be resurrected just like Lazarus in the Bible.
Various species of petrel have had a string of bad luck all around the world. The captive breeding program was a success though -- four pairs were released in North Carolina in 1987. Every once in a while an animal that scientists thought was lost for good and therefore extinct is miraculously rediscovered.
