36 Extinct Animals Lost to History Due to Human Activity

What animals are extinct now because of human influence, whether it be pollution, destroyed habitat, an invasive species that humans introduced to a new area, or hunting? We’ve created a list of extinct animals, all of which have died off directly due to humans. We’ve chronicled some of the most notable losses, from back in 1,000 CE, when human beings first reached new islands, to the most recently extinct animals in the last 100 years, or even in the last 10! In 2011, horn cutting caused the extinction of the Western black rhino, extinct bramble cay melomys no longer wander the Great Barrier Reef due to global warming in 2016, and poor Lonesome George died without a mate in 2012. It seems that, more and more, there have been animals that have gone extinct because of humans very recently. While some are added to endangered lists and saved, many never stop the clock on the countdown to extinction. This newest wave of recently extinct species is a result of what scientists call the Holocene extinction, which is mainly due to human activity. Cool extinct animals, such as weird birds, frogs, and mammals, have continuously joined the list. See pictures of the amazing creatures we have lost due to recent extinctions, from the dodo to the rhino. Perhaps, animals that are extinct will be cloned and returned to the wild one day!