The Extinct Animals We Should Bring Back First

Passenger pigeons once shaped North American forests through enormous flocks and intense disturbance. A restored proxy could recover an ecological process, but only if produced at meaningful population scale.

The dodo is globally recognizable, went extinct through human colonization and comes from an island with active restoration work. Its return could connect genetic science directly to Mauritian conservation.

The South Island giant moa filled a major browsing role in New Zealand before human hunting drove it extinct. Colossal’s artificial-eggshell work makes the technical discussion newly concrete.

A mammoth-like elephant could help test whether large grazers preserve Arctic grasslands and permafrost. The welfare burden on Asian-elephant surrogates makes this famous project much harder to justify.

The Pyrenean ibex is the only extinct animal briefly cloned into a live birth, although the clone died within minutes. That precedent makes it scientifically important and ethically sobering.

The thylacine disappeared recently enough that preserved specimens, photographs and ecological records remain unusually rich. Tasmania still offers habitat, though any return would require careful community consent.

The quagga was a southern African zebra population with distinctive striping, not a wholly separate body plan. Selective breeding has already recreated some appearance, though genetics and ecology remain incomplete.

Aurochs shaped European landscapes before domestication and extinction, and back-breeding projects already seek functional substitutes. Existing habitat and herd-management knowledge make a proxy more plausible than many revivals.

The great auk was a large flightless seabird destroyed by hunting across the North Atlantic. Closely related living species and identifiable breeding habitat give restoration a clearer biological starting point.

Gastric-brooding frogs carried developing young inside the stomach and gave birth through the mouth. Recovering that extraordinary biology could advance both conservation and reproductive science.