Extinct Animals

Content

In the book that you hold in your hands, you will read about Extinct animals which do not exist today anymore. Animal extinctions might be caused by natural disasters, for example, climatic heating, cooling, and changes in sea levels. Nowadays, however, we must blame human activities. Habitat destruction as farming land expands and forests are cut down is the main cause of modern extinctions, along with pollution, and overfishing or hunting. Increasingly, however, climate change is thought to be driving extinctions.

Titanoboa
Megalodon
Dodo
Zanzibar leopard
Baiji River Dolphin
Dunkleosteus

Terror Bird
West African Black Rhino
Golden Toad
Tasmanian Devil
Pyrenean Ibex
Woolly Rhinoceros

The Extinct Animals book is created by 8v-graders,
"Nesho Bonchev" High School - Panagyurishte, 2022-2023.

Titanoboa

It is an extinct species of snake that existed about 60 million years ago. She inhabited the earth after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The Titanoboa has been declared the largest snake known to mankind, reaching 15 meters in length and weight over 1,100 kilograms.
Remains of the huge reptile were found in Cerrejon (the largest coal mine in the world), which is located in Colombia. Her skeleton can be seen in the museum in Chicago.

Monika K.

Megalodon

Most of us are familiar with the giant shark that once dominated our oceans, even if it’s mainly due to movies like the 2018 horror flick, The Meg.

The Megalodon is often depicted as a larger version of the great white, but scientists admit that they know very little about its appearance beyond the fact that it was “a big, big shark with a lot of big teeth.”

Some people seem desperate to prove that this prehistoric sea creature still exists, but scientists are confident that the species became extinct around 3.6 million years ago.

The Megalodon was a cartilaginous species, so no skeletons or complete fossils exist. Based on the size of the teeth, scientists estimate it to have been between 124 cm and 152cm long. That’s three times the size of the largest great white ever recorded!

Anna Raysher

Woolly Mammoth

This closely
related to the modern-day elephant migrated out of Africa about 3.5 million
years ago, spreading across northern Eurasia and North America. The creature was over 4 meters tall
and could weigh over 6 tons. They were covered in fur and their tusks could be
up to 5 meters long! The Woolly Mammoth disappeared 10,000 years ago because of
hunting by humans and the climate change.

Denitsa T

Gigantic aquatic scorpion

During this age in Earth's history, between 541 million and 252 million years ago, arthropods (animals with exoskeletons such as insects, scorpions, and horseshoe crabs) were exploring the extremes of size, from tiny to huge.

In fact, some Paleozoic arthropods represent the largest animals on Earth at the time. If you were to take a swim in the Paleozoic oceans, you may have been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to find one of the most fearsome of these extinct arthropods: the sea scorpions, Eurypterida.

Although Eurypterida looked broadly like scorpions (with a similar body shape, albeit built for swimming), they were not. They were more like the cousins of modern scorpions.

In the end, the powerful sea scorpions were unable to survive the Great Dying, along with the other marine invertebrates of the age.

Ana Maria Kyoseva

Dodo

The dodo was a bird. It lay on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. It was more than a meter high. At one time there were thousands of them on the island. The people from Europe arrived and started to eat them. The Europeans took animals such as dogs and cats to the island, and the animals ate the dodo eggs. And in 1681, it became extinct because it couldn't fly.

Angel R.

* If you click on the bird while reading, you will hear its voice! Try out!!

Baiji river dolphin

This dolphin is one of the first dolphin species to become extinct due to human activity.

Nicknamed the "Goddess of the Yangtze River", these freshwater river dolphins have survived for 20 million years. In 2006, this species of dolphin was officially declared functionally extinct. This means, even if older specimens are found, there will be no next generation.

Cause of Extinction: Their extinction is likely due to poor fishing methods, such as the use of large nets, which causes the dolphins to die accidentally.

Ivayla S.

Dunkleosteus

Three hundred and fifty-eight million years ago, a shallow sea shore with marine life covered northeastern Ohio. Dunkleosteus Terrell, the largest carnivore and one of the most ferocious living creatures of the Devonian "Age of Fishes," ruled the subtropical waters.

Up to 6 meters long and weighing over 1 ton, this arthropod is capable of chopping prehistoric sharks to shreds! Dunkleosteus had a massive skull made of thick bony plates and 2 sets of tooth-like projections near the front of powerful, self-sharpening jaw bones.

Steliana U.