Choose your animal
Research an extinct animal and investigate how and why animals become extinct. It can be a mammal, reptile, amphibian, fish, invertebrate or bird.
Examples pictured in the original: the dodo, the golden toad, the northern white rhino and Tyrannosaurus rex.
Appearance and size
The brief asks for a picture, ideally compared to a fully grown human for scale.
Sketch it next to a person (print this page and draw)
Diet and nutrition
Where it lived
Watch for this: a lot of extinct island species were common and widespread on one island and nowhere else. That is not the same as being widespread, and it is often exactly why they died out.
How and when it went extinct
The two questions this whole project is really about
If you chose a prehistoric animal
The brief adds a second part for prehistoric animals: include information on the pressure humans put on animals now, and how that causes extinction.
IUCN Red List — the reference table
The Red List is how conservationists describe risk. Extinct is the last category on it, not the only one.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Extinct | After exhaustive surveys, the last known individual has died |
| Extinct in the Wild | Survives only in captivity, cultivation or a naturalised population well outside the past range |
| Critically Endangered | Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild |
| Endangered | Very high risk of extinction in the wild |
| Vulnerable | High risk of extinction in the wild |
| Near Threatened | Likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future |
| Least Concern | Widespread and abundant |
| Data Deficient | Not enough information to assess the risk |
| Not Evaluated | Not yet assessed against the criteria |
Plenty of species went extinct while listed as Data Deficient or Not Evaluated. Nobody was counting. That is a finding worth writing about.