If you visit any websites that focus on science or subscribe to magazines of the same kind (like National Geographic or Discover), you are constantly reading about threatened or endangered animals.  When you are reading Earth History books, it’s easier to view the many different species adapting and changing to different environments by evolving into a new species, or even dying out entirely.  But it is difficult to watch when it is happening right in front of you.  For today, let’s take a look into the past, at some animals that are now extinct (but fai

Environmental Graffiti released an article late in August, providing several pictures of seven extinct animals.  You can see the entire article here, but I wanted to show you a few of the pictures and say a bit about the animals.

Photo: F. York

Here’s an interesting animal: the Quagga.  A subspecies of the zebra, the Quagga died out in the 1870s.  Because of its fascinating appearance, it was probably hunted to extinction by poachers.  There have been projects to breed back the Quagga which have been successful.

Photo: EJ Keller

The Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger was already very rare on the Australian mainland when the Europeans colonized it.  Yet the Thylacine survived there until the 1930s.  They were probably hunted to extinction by farmers, who blamed them for dragging off their sheep and killing their livestock.

I encourage you to read the rest of the article.  Though we musn’t dwell in the past, we should learn from it and respect it.

Harmony,

Janet Roper

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