What are the world's endangered animals

The 8 most extinct animals worth remembering

1, Caribbean monk seal

Lebe monk seal was first discovered in 1494 during Columbus' second voyage, and its numbers were more than 250,000 at the most. In 1952, a sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was reported between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which proved to be the last sighting of this endangered species. Wildlife experts investigated several reports of alleged sightings of the species over the past few decades, but ultimately confirmed that they were all other seal species.In 1967, the Caribbean monk seal was listed as endangered for the first time

2. The dodo

The dodo is the best-known species of human-behavior-caused extinction. It is a large flightless bird that is only found in the island nation of Mauritius in Africa. Its fat size always made it waddle, together with a big beak, made it look a bit ugly. Luckily, there are no natural predators for them on the island, so they comfortably build nests in the woods to incubate their eggs and reproduce their offspring. Because it can't fly, so much so that you might not even believe it's a bird. It's a member of the dove-pigeon family. European sailors discovered this bird on the island of Mauritius in 1507. After that, the European sailors who settled on top of the island of Mauritius and the pigs they raised soon realized that this bird tastes good to eat. So a lot of dodos were eaten. By 1681, no more dodos had been found alive on the island. The few dodos were brought to England in the 17th century, but no one has seen a live dodo in over 200 years. That's where the idiom "gone like the dodo" comes from. Because they went completely extinct, they have never been known to anyone since.

3. Saber-toothed tiger

More than a million years ago, the saber-toothed tiger, which had been dominant, suddenly had to face the danger of extinction. Fossils from the La Brea Tar Pits show that that catastrophe threatened many species. Many animals suffered the same extinction as the saber-toothed tiger. Carbon-14 dating shows that it was just at the end of the last ice age. For 100,000 long years, temperatures on Earth were 5 to 10 degrees Celsius cooler than they are today. But 11,000 years ago, the global climate began to warm. In Arizona's Sonora Desert, paleobotanist Giulio Bettenco has found compelling evidence revealing that the massive climate change during the reign of the saber-toothed tiger led to disaster.

4. Giant Rat

Scientists reported in September 2003 that a 700-kilogram giant rat (Phoberomys pattersoni,) roamed the swamps of Venezuela about 8 million years ago. The bison-sized rat lived between six and eight million years ago in a lush, wooded area that was a haven for large herbivores. The giant rat was a grass-eater with soft fur, a smooth head, small ears and eyes, and a strong tail that supported its balance with its hind legs as it stood up to watch for predators.

The giant rat lived in a time when South America was isolated from the rest of the world. At that time, South America's landmass was not connected to North America, and its animals could develop and evolve independently of the other continents. About three million years ago, everything changed, the Isthmus of Panama was exposed to the water, so that animals from other continents could enter South America through the Isthmus of Panama, which may have led to the demise of the giant rat. Scientists believe that most rats are so small that they are able to hide underground when danger strikes, but for the giant rat, digging a hole was just too big a project. As a large animal, it had to rely on fleeing to avoid pursuers such as crocodiles.

5. The Ancestral Elephant

Scientists knew that elephants were related to the modern buffalo, but never thought that the elephant's ancestors would have lived in the water. Now that evolutionary link has been found. The ancient ancestor of the elephant, called the Moeritherium, was huge, with a long trunk with tiny eyes, and lived during the Eocene period, about 37 million years ago. This long trunk later evolved into an elephant trunk. Scientists analyzed the tusks of the ancestor elephant, measured the chemical characteristics of the tooth enamel, and learned that the animal ate a diet very similar to that of an aquatic animal and lived much like today's hippopotamus, often spending time in rivers and marshes, unlike whales, which spend their entire lives swimming in the water. Another reason they were not 100 percent aquatic was because they supported their weight on their feet and walked on them. The fossils of this ancestor elephant were found in Egypt and are estimated to weigh 225-350 kilograms, without the big ears and trunks of today's elephants

6, giant reptiles

In the Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs ruled the roost, mammals were very small in size. They came and went by day and by night, living in the shadow of the "tyrant". But in 2005 in China's western Liaoning discovered mammal fossils, changed the view of scientists. It turns out that 130 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous, some robust mammals can not only and dinosaurs, but also the dinosaurs as a "meal". This mammal is more than 1 meter long, it is robust, but not good at long-distance running. Archaeologists named the newly discovered fossil animal "giant reptile". Interestingly, in a strong reptile fossilized stomach found a group of stacked bones, the lower part of the bone group has two rows of neat teeth, but also can clearly distinguish the same animal's forelimbs, hind limbs, toes and so on. Scientists believe that this is the teeth and bones of the parrot-billed dragon cubs, and inferred that the strong reptiles as "early", after capturing the prey, even chewing, not chewing, swallowed in large chunks. Unfortunately, shortly after the perfect meal, a nearby volcano erupted, burying the beast in a thick layer of ash.

7. Ancient Shoal Beasts

As early as the Mesozoic Era, when birds first spread their wings, mammals already appeared in the sky. In the December 14, 2006 issue of Nature, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences tell us a story of flight that took place 125 million years ago in Daohugou, Ningcheng District, Inner Mongolia. The newly discovered fossil, named Volaticotherium antiquus, was a small arboreal mammal that fed on insects. Between its limbs and tail, considerable hair-covered wing membranes were attached, which provided great gliding ability. Prior to this, the earliest fossil record of a flying mammal found by paleontologists was a 51-million-year-old bat fossil, and the discovery of the glider moved mammals' foray into the skies forward by at least 70 million years.

8, giant scorpion

Scientists in 2007 discovered ancient scorpions taller than a man, fully 8 feet tall (equivalent to 2 meters 4) , weighing 400 pounds (about 181.4 kilograms), and with legs averaging 18 inches (about 45.7 cm) long. This deadly marine scorpion is the ancient ancestor of today's scorpions, which went extinct 390 million years ago. This discovery shows that there was a time of terror before the dinosaurs. At that time, a large number of ancient spiders, insects and crabs were gigantic. As well as being huge, the marine scorpion has the appearance of a modern scorpion, which lived in the salt water of the oceans and the fresh water of lakes and rivers around 460 million - 255 million years ago.

The remains of this scorpion were found near Plum, in the western German state of Rhineland-Baltic. Scientists found this marine scorpion with an armored shell and huge body, indicating that they were once kings of the animal kingdom, at the top of the food chain, eating fish and trilobites, and even cannibalizing each other. They generally live in the water and sometimes walk on six legs in the seabed, while a pair of hind legs turn into paddles for marching. They protect themselves with a hard shell, otherwise they are vulnerable to attack by rivals. They may also only wait until their new shells have hardened before mating.