Extinct animal

“ But have we nothing better for this conclusion than an assumption of the possibility, and a more or less probable conjecture? Yes; we have some facts of interest to warrant it, or I should not have ventured to introduce the subject in this work. There are facts,—besides the admixture of human workmanship with the animal remains in undisturbed deposits—direct evidence, not altogether shadowy, of the co-existence of the extinct animals with living men.
And first, I would mention some circumstances bearing analogy to the exhumation of the fresh Pachyderms of Siberia. ”

“ Romer and Edwin H. Colbert have put forward another explanation for the extinction of the mammals. They suggest that the advent of man in the New World may have upset a nicely balanced state of nature. [31] But man had been living with just such animals in the Old World for hundreds of thousands of years before they became extinct. What, then, destroyed the mammoth in Europe?
The most pulling of all the fossils of extinct animals are those in the deep Alaska muck beds. Their numbers are appalling. They lie frozen in tangled masses, interspersed with uprooted trees. ”

“ Now it has become fashionable to become an ecologist. Prince Philip's talk of saving the whales is a joke to me. The fellow has nothing else to do. And Queen Anne talks of saving the seals! Why are they concerned about whales and seals? If what I read is true, only fifteen percent of all the animal species that ever lived are alive today. All the other species have become extinct. Only five percent of all the plant species that ever existed exist now. So, extinction of species is the regular order of things in nature. Perhaps man should have become extinct long ago, I don't know. ”

“ The consequence is, that, while every individual animal and plant dies, the species survives. In the whole history of the animals and plants now existing on the globe, only eight or ten certain examples are on record in which a species has become extinct, and those are some large birds, such as the dinornis and dodo, once inhabitants of the Isle of Bourbon and New Zealand. Every one of the human family, every elephant, every ox, every lion, &c., die, but man, as a species, still lives ”

“ EXTINCT ANIMALS. Extinct animals, as the term is used in the present article, means those whose species have been exterminated since the advent of man upon the earth, and in most cases, as a matter of fact, by his agency, directly or indirectly. ”

“ Like the wild camels, genuine wild horses are very generally believed to be extinct. The vast herds which occur to-day in a [195] wild state in Europe, America, and Australia are to be regarded, say those who believe in the extinction theory, as descended from domesticated animals which have run wild. So far as the American and Australian horses are concerned, this is no doubt true; but of the European stocks it is by no means so certain. ”

“ A simple example is hunting: a specific animal can be hunted in small numbers indefinitely (assuming that its habitat is not damaged) but once a certain number is exceeded hunters discover that they are having to travel further and further to find the animal and ultimately the animal may become extinct. ”

“ It must therefore be remembered that all restorations of extinct animals, representing them as in life, are merely the sum of our knowledge concerning them, as close approximations to the real truth as it is possible to make. ”

“ It had now become clearly evident, moreover, that the fossils from the older formations were all extinct species, and that only in the most recent deposits were there remains of forms still living. The equally important fact had been established that in several groups of both animals and plants the extinct forms were vastly more numerous than the living, while several orders of fossil animals had no representatives in modern times. Human remains had been found mingled with those of extinct animals, but the association was regarded as an accidental one by the authorities in science ”

“ So that estimating the number of extinct animals is a sort of way of comparing the past creation as a whole with the present as a whole. Among the mammalia and birds there are none extinct; but when we come to the reptiles there is a most wonderful thing: out of the eight orders, or thereabouts, which you can make among reptiles, one-half are extinct. ”

“ The general effect of these investigations has been to introduce to us a multitude of extinct animals, the existence of which was previously hardly suspected; just as if zoologists were to become acquainted with a country, hitherto unknown, as rich in novel forms of life as Brazil or South Africa once were to Europeans. Indeed, the fossil fauna of the Western Territories of America bid fair to exceed in interest and importance all other known Tertiary deposits put together ”

“ There were to be seen the evidences of man's existence scattered among the remains of animals long ago extinct—animals which must have lived before geological changes which took place ages on ages ago. ”

“ No doubt, much of the scepticism with which attempts to restore extinct animals are met by many intelligent people is traceable to the widespread belief that such off-hand and easy-going methods are used in the work. ”

“ The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns,—a sort of fucus or lichen in bone,—to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this! ”

“ It is a fact, that many species of the lower order of animals which once existed are now extinct. It has been asserted and denied, that fossil remains of man have been found, indicating that races which once existed have disappeared from the face of the earth. ”

“ It was thought in those days that whatever animals lived in the past must have resembled those now inhabiting the world, and the idea of extinct types unknown to man, and unknown to the regions where their bones were found embedded below the soil, was of so novel and startling a character as to appear incredible. ”

“ Everywhere the animals which have most recently become extinct resemble more or less closely those which now live in the same country; and where {103}there are exceptions to the rule, we can generally trace them to some changed conditions which have led to the extinction of certain types. ”

“ The absolute extermination of a species means that not one individual of it remains alive. Judgment to this effect is based upon the lapse of time since the last living specimen was observed or killed. When five years have passed without a living "record" of a wild specimen, it is time to place a species in the class of the totally extinct. ”

“ It is, perhaps, one of the most interesting discoveries of modern geology, that certain races of animals now extinct have in various ways assumed some of the characteristics presented by animals much higher in the scale of being, that flourish in the present day. ”

“ They are forced to admit that many species and genera have become extinct—so much is proved by the skeletons of prehistoric beasts found from time to time under the earth's surface. But what they dispute is that there is any connection between those beasts and living animals. ”

“ These faunas are far stranger than the corresponding ones of North America and differ more radically from those of modern times, since they include a much larger proportion of extinct types, and the extinctions have swept away not only species and genera, but families and orders as well. ”

“ But the extinction of a species will certainly affect other species which it either preyed upon, or competed with, or served for food; while the increase of any one animal may soon lead to the extinction of some other to which it was inimical. ”

“ It is most difficult always to remember that the increase of every living creature is constantly being checked by unperceived hostile agencies; and that these same unperceived agencies are amply sufficient to cause rarity, and finally extinction. So little is this subject understood, that I have heard surprise repeatedly expressed at such great monsters as the Mastodon and the more ancient Dinosaurians having become extinct; as if mere bodily strength gave victory in the battle of life. ”

“ And some of the animals that are now extinct owe their extinction, not to their gigantic size, but to their having sought safety rather than adventure, and imprisoned themselves in their mechanical armour of defence. ”

“ In the cases where we can trace the extinction of a species through man, either wholly or in one limited dis [Pg 93] trict, we know that it becomes rarer and rarer, and is then lost; it would be difficult to point out any just distinction between a species destroyed by man or by the increase of its natural enemies. The evidence of rarity preceding extinction, is more striking in the successive tertiary strata, as remarked by several able observers; it has often been found that a shell very common in a tertiary stratum is now most rare, and has even long been thought to be extinct. ”

“ In short, there is every reason to believe that many of their species would become extinct, and that the remainder would live, so to speak, mainly on sufferance, playing no appreciable part in the economy of the globe. ”

“ But, singularly enough, the majority of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those that now live. Nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order. As a broad fact, the further we go back in time the less the buried species are like existing forms; and the further apart the sets of extinct creatures are the less they are like one another. In other words, there has been a regular succession of living beings, each younger set being in a very broad and general sense somewhat more like those which now live. ”

“ Even in the farthest swamps of America, in the lands beyond the Caspian, and wherever the royal heron breeds, one can follow the bird hunter, and see him at his horrible and murderous work. The end is everlasting silence. A rare species is soon utterly destroyed. In the last century alone about two dozen species of birds became extinct. And in these days nearly a dozen more species of birds are threatened with extinction! According to the Reports of the Smithsonian Institute this is notably the case in America with regard to quite as many species. ”

“ To admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct—to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly [Pg 94] when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude of death—to feel no surprise at sickness—but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he died through violence." [69]
Geographical distribution is an important element in this question of extinction. ”

“ In the Lartet Collection, Paris.
We know that man has exterminated a great many noble animals in his time, and, alas! continues to do so at the present time in Africa, and in North and South America. The giraffe and the bison, once so plentiful, are now almost extinct. Primitive man was a hunter, and, as he multiplied, his wants became greater, and more animals were therefore destroyed. Probably the same explanation applies to the great Moa bird of New Zealand, and possibly even to the Megatherium of South America. ”

“ Further, it brings before us this remarkable fact, that while in the older periods all the animals whose remains we find are extinct as species, so soon as we enter on the Neozoic we find some which still continue to our time—at first only a very few, but in later and later beds in gradually increasing percentage, till the fossil and extinct wholly disappear in the recent and living. ”

“ With extinction rates now exceeding natural background rates by a factor of 100 to 1,000 [30] , our results also suggest that this slow advance in the description of species will lead to species becoming extinct before we know they even existed. High rates of biodiversity loss provide an urgent incentive to increase our knowledge of Earth's remaining species. ”

“ It appears also to be a law of life, illustrated by many extinct groups of animals, that they endure for geological ages, and having fought their battle in life's history, grow old and unable to continue the fight, and then disappear from the earth, giving place to more vigorous types adapted to live under new conditions. ”

“ Looking next to the extinction of animals, we find that the species found in the oldest deposits containing human remains are in part still extant. Others which are locally extinct we know existed in Europe until historical times, that is, within the last two thousand years. ”

“ Yet this extraordinary condition of affairs has actually come to pass. Entire species of animals which belonged to the magnificent fauna of North America are already extinct or are rapidly becoming so. ”

“ Again we find that the introduction of domestic creatures or others kept as pets has brought diseases which may prove fatal to the indigenous fauna. Another means by which man causes immense destruction, is by destroying the natural habitat of various species. ”

“ Not only have we the negative fact of the absence of his remains from all the earlier Tertiary formations, but the positive fact that all the mammalia of these earlier ages are now extinct, and that man could not have survived the changes of condition which destroyed them and introduced the species now our contemporaries. ”