#extinct species

South island kokano

not seen since 2007
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/02/02/reward-sighting-kokako-bird/

Ivory billed woodpecker
https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/ivbwoo/introduction
not seen since 1935

Jerdon’s babbler
no seen since the 1940′s. rediscovered
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150305110237.htm

red-faced liocichla

https://www.ecowatch.com/nepals-extinct-bird-spotted-after-disappearing-for-178-years-1891173872.html

Night parrot
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-23/night-parrot-sighting-in-wa-shocks-birdwatching-world/8377624
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Just finished watching David Attenborough’s ‘A Life On Our Planet’ all the way through.

Everybody needs to see this documentary. It is a wake-up call that things need to change. And fast.

The thing that people need to realise is that it only takes small changes to make a big difference. On an individual level, we can all make changes that won’t disrupt our daily lives in huge ways - we can switch to using less plastic (even if it’s just replacing bottles of soap with soap bars), a few times a week we can choose to walk to places instead of using transport and we can cut down on meat and dairy in our diets. These are just a few examples, but any small contribution makes a huge difference if we all play our part.

But we cannot just tackle climate change on an individual level - governments and global corporations need to recognise the damage they are doing and they need to operate more sustainably. This is has been proven to be possible, for example, Switzerland operates on a tariff scheme which means electricity is generated by primarily renewable means and hydroelectric powerplants produce 60% of the country’s electricity.

With the loss of species, wildfires, violent storms and the coronavirus pandemic, there is no excuse for governments to ignore the devastating effects that humans are having on the environment. Powerful world leaders cannot sit in their chairs, pout and simply say “I don’t think science knows” when they’re presented with evidence for climate change. They also cannot continue to label protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion “terrorists” when they are ultimately fighting for a more peaceful world.

I know that after watching 'A Life On Our Planet’ I will make changes to try and help as much as possible. I will be careful not to purchase products which contain palm oil, I will try to use less plastic and although I have never eaten meat I will be reducing my dairy intake. I will also vote only for political parties that have sustainable environmental policies.

I hope we can all learn from David Attenborough and put his advice into action. Although there’s a chance we can still save our world, that window of opportunity is closing fast and we can only keep it open if we work together.

a-dinosaur-a-day:

By Scott Reid on @drawingwithdinosaurs

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Name:Aepyornis 

Status: Extinct

First Described: 1851

Described By: I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire

Classification:Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Palaeognathae, Notopalaeognathae, Novaeratitae,Apterygiformes + Aepyornithihformes Clade, Aepyornithiformes, Aepyornithidae 

Referred Species:A. gracilis, A. hildebrandti, A. maximus, A. medius

And now on to the Elephant Birds! Aepyornisis the larger of the two genera of elephant birds, and the largest bird in the world until it went extinct about 1,000 years ago. These birds lived entirely in Madagascar, and lived there throughout the Holocene, so from 12,000 years ago to 1,000 years ago. Genetically - so with analyses of ancient DNA still present in Aepyornisremains - it is most closely related to modern Kiwi, indicating that a flighted ancestor of both diverged into a group that reached Madagascar, and another group that reached New Zealand, and both evolved flightlessness independently. It is thought to have been about 3 meters tall and weighing up to 400 kilograms. Its eggs had circumferences of up to over 1 meter - 160 times greater than chicken eggs. 

By Matt Martyniuk, CC BY-SA 3.0

Aepyornis(purple) is shown here alongside other dinosaurs such as the modern Ostrich (red), which it is significantly larger than, the extinct raptor Utahraptor(green) which it is about the same size as, the extinct raptor Deinonychus(blue) which it is much much larger than, and the chickenparrot Gigantoraptor(orange) which is significantly larger than the Elephant Bird. Subfossils of this genus are found throughout Madagascar, though it is uncertain whether or not they lived in rainforests (like a scaled-up cassowary) or in grasslands (like a scaled up rhea), though they had small wings and as such probably weren’t fast runners, instead were slow moving birds with strong, stout legs. Eggs are occasionally found in the fossil record, and they’re the largest bird eggs known. They seem to have mainly eaten coastal wetland plants, though very little is known about their life habits.  

By José Carlos Cortés on @quetzalcuetzpalin-art​ 

Aepyornisprobably died out due to human activity. They were widespread on the island, but they began to be more and more restricted in range during the time of human settlement. Evidence exists that human families would use their large eggs for food. It is difficult to tell exactly when they went extinct, but it seems to have been about 1000 years ago. They may have also caught diseases from the domesticated birds humans brought with them for food. 

Sources: 

http://fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=39293 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aepyornis 

Mayr, G. 2017. Avian Evolution: The Fossil Record of Birds and its Paleobiological Significance. Topics in Paleobiology, Wiley Blackwell. West Sussex.

Today I learned about extinct giant sloths and when I heard that I thought, “oh, probably the size of, like, a small bear?” NO THIS BITCH COULD EAT A BEAR WHY DID HE NEED TO BE THAT BIG LOOK AT HIM COMPARED TO THE LITTLE DUDES IN THE TREE????

“Not sure if you’ll know anything about this but it’s worth a shot! So, in my conservation bio class today, we got to the topic of animals being extinct and the eastern mountain lion. I go to college in the mountains but according to my teacher many locals claim to have seen mountain lions and even a student has seen one. I was wondering, even if there is a small population of eastern mountain lions, would they only be taken off the extinct list only after proper evidence was given and they’re shown to be able to grow or is it likely a species like that is too small to come back from extinction?”

If it was able to be definitively proved that animals in the eastern mountain lion subspecies were still alive today, they’d no longer be considered extinct. That’s all that goes into that decision. That doesn’t mean they’d inherently have any protections under federal law or anything, however, because as an extinct subspecies they were delisted from the Endangered Species Act in 2018.

An analysis of over 100 credible studies covering over 100 years led US Fish and Wildlife to determine that eastern mountain lions have probably been extinct for decades - plausibly since before the Endangered Species Act was even passed. Here’s their statement on what they found from a media release sent out in 2018 when the official de-listing occurred: “Accounts suggest that most eastern cougars disappeared in the 1800s, killed out of fear for human and livestock safety and were victims of massive deforestation and overharvesting of white-tailed deer, the cougar’s primary prey. The last records of eastern cougars are believed to be from Maine (1938) and New Brunswick (1932)”

But! That doesn’t mean the reports of local cougars sightings are incorrect! (Although, they can be, people do tend to see smaller wildcats and immediately think mountain lion). Here’s the thing: western cougar populations are recovering very well, and so a lot of documented cougar sightings in the eastern part of North America are thought to be western cougars dispersing eastward. There’s good data for this in peer-reviewed studies, such as this one discussing the recolonization of southwest Saskatchewan and southeast Alberta from 2015.

Probably the most notable example of this long-range dispersal was a young male cougar who was hit by a car in Connecticut, of all places, in 2011. That’s so far east of what was thought to be their current range that it was pretty widely assumed the cat had to be an escaped exotic pet. But no! Camera trap data confirmed that the same individual had been seen making his long trek, and genetic analysis confirmed that he was originally from the Black Hills population in North Dakota.

(Photo source)

A lot of cougar sightings in the Midwest and points further east are - as with the 2011 cougar - assumed by the media to be escaped captive animals. A couple of years ago I analyzed the last 20 years of publicly available data from advocacy orgs that track big cat escapes and attacks, and a large percentage of the sightings of loose cougars seemed likely to be dispersed wild animals: they didn’t fit the patterns you see around captive exotic pet escapes nor did the cats behave like animals habituated to people, they almost always occurred in suburban developments that were situated right next to large patches of open land and/or protected areas, and they were generally within the geographic areas where dispersal has been increasingly documented. Most supposed cougars were seen once in passing, or only a few times, and generally never were a nuisance enough to be caught or killed (excepting the ones hunting domestic animals or the ones that got hit by cars). In some cases, it was really obvious they were wild: there was one incident in McGregor, MN in 2001 where a female cougar was found attacking a dog in a suburb right next to a wildlife preserve, and two very young cubs were sighted in the area a few days later. A lot of times, local wildlife officials couldn’t confirm any formal reintroductions of cougars into the area and/or referred to historical data for eastern cougar sightings when discussing the most recent sightings of wild cats in the area - so with that ruled out by the easily accessible local experts, local media defaulted to “probably a pet.”

Over the years, I think the general awareness that cougars are dispersing farther east has become somewhat more common due to major outlets like the New York Times covering stories like the 2011 dispersal. But as you mentioned, on a community level, it’s still sort of like a cryptid sighting! People know that cougars don’t exist outside of western North America and Florida anymore, so why do they keep seeing them?

So no, unfortunately, it’s pretty unlikely Eastern mountain lions are extant at this point - but that doesn’t mean that other mountain lions aren’t expanding into the lands they used to roam.