Extinct Animals Facts

The Steppe lion ranked among the largest cats to have lived, with some individuals exceeding 300 kg and outscaling any modern Lion.

Around 11,000–13,000 years ago, the end of the last Ice Age reshaped the steppe, and many large prey species declined or disappeared. Human expansion added sustained pressure through hunting and competition.

The landscape shifted, the prey base thinned, and the steppe lion disappeared with it.

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Photo by: Jean Wimmerlin

Sauropods turned plant matter into size on a scale land has never seen.

Air-sac lungs, long necks, and constant feeding let them keep growing while everything else hit a limit.

Nothing since has come close, I explain why we think this is in my new book!

The Bones Beneath Us is out now - comment BOOK or hit the link in my bio.

The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) was a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Both the word "cave" and the scientific name spelaeus are used because fossils of this species were mostly found in caves. This reflects the views of experts that cave bears may have spent more time in caves than the brown bear, which uses caves only for hibernation.

Standing close to 3.5 meters (11.50 ft) tall while rearing up, the cave bear had a very broad, domed skull with a steep forehead. Its stout body had long thighs, massive shins and in-turning feet, making it similar in skeletal structure to the brown bear.

Image credit: Wild Sheep Studio

Scientists recently confirmed that two marsupials known only from fossil remains are still alive in the remote rainforests of West Papua, New Guinea.

Their rediscovery highlights one of the biggest challenges in conservation biology: proving a species has actually disappeared.

In this week’s newsletter, I break down the expedition that found them, why scientists believed they were extinct, and what discoveries like this mean for our understanding of extinction itself.

Comment NEWSLETTER and I’ll send you the link.

Photos by: Carlos Bocos

Newly documented rock art in northern Australia shows detailed images of the Tasmanian tiger, an animal thought to have disappeared from the mainland around 3,000 years ago.

Some of these paintings may be less than 1,000 years old, raising the possibility that thylacines survived far more recently than we believed.

The animals are painted with clear stripes, stiff tails, and dog-like bodies, suggesting the artists either saw them alive or were working from a very recent memory.

Photos: Craig Bangarr

After five years of running , I’ve written my first full-length book.

Beneath every city, forest, and ocean lies a history written in extinction.

Entire worlds existed here before us, each one replaced by what followed.

The Bones Beneath Us brings that record into view and places our species firmly inside it.

It shows how life endures through collapse, how environments shift beyond recognition, and how humans emerge as a recent, thinking part of that system.

Comment book and I’ll send you the link to find out more!

Deinonychus is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur with one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This species, which could grow up to 3.4 meters (11 ft) long, lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago.

Deinonychus possessed large "hands" (manus) with three claws on each forelimb. The first digit was shortest and the second was longest. Each hind foot bore a sickle-shaped claw on the second digit, which was probably used during predation.

Geological evidence suggests that Deinonychus inhabited a floodplain or swamplike habitat. The paleoenvironment of both the upper Cloverly Formation and the Antlers Formation, in which remains of Deinonychus have been found, consisted of tropical or sub-tropical forests, deltas and lagoons, not unlike today's Louisiana.

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Megalonyx is an extinct genus of ground sloths of the family Megalonychidae, native to North America during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. It became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event.

Megalonyx was a large, heavily built herbivore about 3 m (9.8 ft) long. Its maximum weight is estimated at 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). This is medium-sized among the giant ground sloths. Like other ground sloths, it had a blunt snout, massive jaw, and large peg-like teeth.

M. jeffersonii, also known as Jefferson's ground sloth, was apparently the most wide-ranging giant ground sloth. Fossils are known from many Pleistocene sites in the United States, including most of the states east of the Rocky Mountains as well as along the west coast. It was the only ground sloth to range as far north as the present-day Yukon.

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Pycnonemosaurus is a genus of carnivorous theropod dinosaur belonging to the family Abelisauridae, a group of predatory dinosaurs that thrived in the Southern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous period. Fossil remains of Pycnonemosaurus were discovered in Brazil. This species lived during the late Campanian to early Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, approximately 75 to 70 million years ago.

The fossil remains of Pycnonemosaurus are fragmentary, with no well-preserved elements. The bone surfaces show significant abrasion, suggesting that the fossils were partially exposed to the elements before being collected. The type specimen represents an immature individual, though its exact stage of development remains uncertain, with researchers suggesting it was likely a subadult.

Early estimates placed the dinosaur’s length between 6 and 7 meters (20–23 feet) and its weight at approximately 1.2 tonnes (1.3 short tons). However, more recent analyses indicate that Pycnonemosaurus was likely larger, reaching an estimated length of around 8.9 meters (29.2 feet).

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