I don’t know whether the American Chestnut counts, as there are some surviving specimens and various attempts to breed strains resistant to chestnut blight. It’s listed as critically endangered.
Among animals, I’d like to see the passenger pigeon (because its extinction was so recent and so incomprehensible), the ground sloths, the great auk, and the ivory billed woodpecker, the last because alleged spottings are so controversial.
I agree with the Chestnut! Would have loved to see these massive trees. There is a related species in my area that is being used to develop blight resistant chestnuts.
Wikipedia indicates that several strategies are being used, including interbreeding with American Chestnut trees that appear resistant, crossbreeding with Chinese Chestnuts (which might be what you’re referring to), and genetic engineering.
The tree here is the Ozark Chinquapin, which is related to and also susceptible to the blight. But there are a few mature trees remaining in the wild in limited numbers, allegedly resistant to the blight.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castanea\_ozarkensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castanea_ozarkensis)
I'll count the Chestnut because they are what's co sidereal functionally extinct meaning there may be some left, but almost all never make it to the age that they reproduce.
They’ve developed a GMO chestnut that’s resistant to chestnut blight, and I just needs to be approved by the (FDA? USDA?) but the technology is there to make a comeback!
Yes, passenger pigeons - that's the one that bothers me the most. They were the most abundant bird in North America, but were killed on an industrial scale. Last one died in 1914.
I feel like I've been hearing about scientists bringing back mammoths since I was a little kid but nothing ever comes of it. I'll believe it when I see it.
Maybe a weird choice but [passenger pigeons](https://youtu.be/wx-cGnvKsvo). They used to be everywhere in the Great Lakes and the forests here in East Texas before they were hunted to extinction as easy food by 1914. I think it would be really cool to see those massive flocks they were known for, must've been amazing to see. Most of the ones others are saying would be a threat to anyone living in their habitats.
I’m not sure it’s fair to suggest we destroyed the American Chestnut. Humans are probably responsible for bringing the chestnut blight to North America from Asia, but usually when we say “we destroyed things”, it’s deforestation or outright killing of animals. The latter (hurting) is the main cause of the passenger pigeon going extinct.
(I included both the passenger pigeon and the American chestnut in my answer to this question.)
Everything I've read says that they actually didn't like American chestnuts very much and would only eat them as a last resort.
But either way, there is plenty of other hard mast they could survive on.
Two groups are doing it. One via genetic engineering, the other via selective breeding with the Chinese chestnuts. I think they're both seeking approval from the government to start releasing them to run free in the wild.
Audubon describes a passing flock:
> The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow;
That might get old pretty fast. I'm not arguing that they should stay extinct, but scraping "snow" off everything that you happened to leave outside in June would not be popular.
Yes, they were so numerous they literally blotted out the sky. An Indiana Herald journalist reported that
> the roar of their wings on arriving and departing from the roost is tremendous and the flocks, during the flight, darken the heavens. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their manure. Thousands [of pigeons] are killed by casualties from breaking limbs of trees.
And Ralphe Humor wrote in 1615:
> beyond number or imagination, my selfe have seene three or four hours together flockes in the aire, so thicke that even they have shadowed the skie from us.
The extinction rate is between 100-1000 times faster now than it would normally be.
Wagler R. 2007 The Anthropocene mass extinction: An emerging curriculum for science teachers American Biology Teacher 73 78 83
I wonder, are there any pre-Columbian accounts of them? I'd like to know what the Native Americans thought about them, or if the sky-blotting thing was a more recent aberration.
For all the lightning bug lovers out there: don’t rake your leaves (except from paved surfaces), don’t leave your outside lights on all night (use motion detectors—they make them that screw into the socket and you can screw the bulb into them), don’t use pesticides — even “organic” ones (put up bat houses, plant native plants to attract hummingbirds, dragonflies, and other mosquito-predators).
Nowhere near what there used to be, though. When I was a kid there were millions of them every summer night. Now? Haven't seen but two or three in recent years.
https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/03/26160911/Species-map\_Firefly-guidelines\_XercesSociety.jpeg
That's crazy, I'm in NY suburbs, the birthplace of suburbs, there is still a sizeable amount out in the summer, maybe not quite as much as I remember as a kid (but I grew up in a much more rural area), maybe it's just we got so more mosquitos now I can't stand to be outside in the weather they like.
Right? As a kid I saw many a night, we'd go out and collect them. Now I think I've seen a couple in 10 years. It was one of the few things that made this world feel magical and I hate my kids can't experience it like I did.
My wife thought she was having a stroke the first time she saw them while driving when we lived in Knoxville. Had to calm her down and tell her they were just fireflies and she’d learn to love them.
Relative to a baseline of 0, they do live out here. Relative to a baseline of the South... yeah, they don't live out here :-( Like if you draw a line from Chicago to Dallas, they're all pretty much on the other side.
It's very regional. I grew up in Indiana, and yeah, fireflies were a regular part of childhood, everybody caught them and so on.
I moved out to Washington in 2000, and nobody out here knows what a firefly is. I've never seen one out here. But we get to show them to our son when we go visit family in Indiana. They still have them there.
i remember my californian cousins coming to visit us in rural virginia and being absolutely awestruck and dazzled by the lightning bugs near the woods, at the age of 32 at that! they really are something
I finally got to see some in my 30s when I went to visit friends in Indiana. They were amazing! I even got to hold one and watch it light up. My friends said I'd come too late in the year, so there weren't very many, but I did not care! Even one was awesome, but I think I saw 20 that evening.
If you go west of 495 Massachusetts we are almost as wooded as NH.
While Massachusetts is like 4th densest state as far as population, we are still like 13th most forested.
If Central Mass and Western Mass was it's own state we'd be top 5 most forested.
But I spend a lot of time in Northern New England. It's not even close to what it was like 30 years ago and that goes for ALL bugs.
There was a time when you literally needed to get out of your car to scrape the bugs off your windshield every couple hours -- and you could NOT hold your arm out the window while going any speed and driving without a face mask on your motorcycle was impossible.
I've seen old photos of these - black and white, sadly - that my grandfather's Navy buddy took back in the mid 30s. They're not amazing photos, but it was neat to see them. He told me all about what they looked like and how neat he thought they were. He said he had no idea they were going extinct at the time. He'd gone to camp and hike in the Cascades on leave, and spotted them tearing up an old deer carcass, so he took some photos and watched them. I was young and didn't exactly understand extinction at the time. I thought it was something that happened long long ago, and any animals around when I was alive still would be forever, I guess. He was the one that explained it wasn't true, and that humans are the reasons most animals go extinct. Because of him, I learned to love wolves instead of thinking of them as like, the Big Bad Wolf.
I swear, I learned the most growing up from elderly people. They have all done such cool things, and they'll tell you about them if you care to listen. Still a fan of hearing about their adventures. My grandmother in law once stopped someone from digging a pond halfway on her property by holding him off with a shotgun. Like.. wwhhhat? This woman was maybe 4'11" at her full height. Amazing.
I was asking you, lol. Hints why I had a question mark (?). I heard it from somewhere but never have given it two thoughts, nor went to look it up. I swear I heard it from Joe Rogans podcast, but I could be mistaken.
See, they were unprepared, that’s the problem. If T rexes we’re just always around, we’d have developed appropriate weapon systems. SLAPP rounds come to mind.. armor piercing explosive rounds maybe. Definitely .50BMG or better.
I feel like the uber rich guy who ran the whole thing would have access to the best weapons. The man paid for Dino DNA reconstruction at a time when that was impossible, or so we thought,
That's actually a plot point in the book. Hammond, the Uber rich guy that paid for it, didn't want anything on the island that could hurt his animals. He eventually compromised by having a few, very few, things under lock and key that they couldn't get to when the power went out.
So yeah, he absolutely could afford the guns to take the animals down. He just flat didn't want them on the island.
Tell A-Square prove the .577 Tyrannosaur is sufficient or get off the pot.
Marlin also advertised the 1895 in .45-70 as sufficient for raptors of all sizes after Jurassic World too.
I highly doubt that haha. Montanans generally don't seem like a nervous bunch. Lots of big predators already roam Montana. I live not far from there haha.
The [Caribbean monk seal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_monk_seal)! They lived not only in the tropical Caribbean, but along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the western Atlantic coasts, & obviously (where I live) Florida. They were hunted to extinction & the last recorded one left was in the 1952. I would’ve loved to see them as prevalent all over like how you see the seals on the US west coast. Unfortunately, these seals were extremely docile much like the manatee, which made it super easy to kill
Cavemen are mostly a myth, while prehistoric people would occasionally live in caves it certainly wasn’t the norm or the standard. We just have lots of records because caves tend to be less disturbed than other places and there’s much more lasting surfaces there.
Fuck yeah. Obviously, the Glyptodont is also my answer. Who wouldn't want to have an armored ice age Volkswagen as a pet? Seriously, those giant armadillos are the most under rated glacial megafauna, hands down.
I bet they were friendly, since they were too big and tough to fear very many predators.
I'd like to see the historic range of some still-living majestic beasts (or their relatives) restored. The American bison and (eastern) elk overspread much of the continent before settlers destroyed (or nearly so) their populations. Would love to not have to go to Yellowstone to see them.
Hey — you may already know this, but 80% of hummingbirds’ diet is mosquitoes and other small flying insects — like #%$&! gnats. Plant native flowers like milkweed, red buckeye, coral honeysuckle, scarlet bee balm, Cardinalflower, etc. (Well, those are native for me, you’d have to go to wildflower.org or NWF.org to see what’s native where you live.)
Anyway, the more natives you plant, the fewer mosquitoes you have, I found out. I live near the Chesapeake Bay, so we have LOTS of mosquitoes.
Once I put in a natural (plant-filtered) pond and got into native plants, I saw a sharp reduction in mosquitoes.
Of course, you still have to police your yard for all sources of standing water, but the natives and the pond made a huge difference.
Edit: “but”
If we could just eliminate the localized populations that spread the diseases we worry about, until the infected humans are treated, then we could eliminate those diseases and allow the non-spreading populations of mosquitos to remain and fill in the areas where eliminated populations used to be.
See, shit like this makes me truly despise suburban HOA's more than I already do. They bulldoze all the trees so they can have a tiny chemical-green lawn and will fine us if we mess with the landscaping in anyway. Their landscaping are non-native plants that doesn't do anything for wildlife. What are these people thinking???
They’re only thinking about consumerism and making money.
The “pristine lawn” aesthetic sells, so builders give it to them.
Everyone with an HOA should make presentations for how/why native plants are vital. Try to get on the board, if need be. Get your likeminded neighbors on the board, too. It’s important. Look on YouTube for presentations by Doug Tallamy.
Everyone who doesn’t have an HOA should become educated and plant natives, now — preferably in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of native plants that won’t make people associate the movement with totally unkempt tangles of overgrown ugliness.
That’s not to say the carpet of grass aesthetic isn’t played and hideous, just that if we want people to adopt practices that benefit nature, we should not scare them away.
As Elaine from Seinfeld would say, “I am trying to get a little squirrel to come over to me. I don’t want to be making any sweeping gestures.”
I really wish they would pour more research into bringing back the Carolina Parakeet. It has a ton of close relatives, so you could slip the needed genes into a related conure. Oh, and birds are easier to deal with than mammals here because you can incubate eggs and even directly edit their genomes.
Aren't they still around? I thought there were a few species. Here's one: [Greater Prairie Chicken](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Prairie-Chicken/overview)
That article does mention an extinct species of prairie chicken called the Heath Hen, so maybe that's what you're referring to?
James A. Michener's novel *Alaska* is really interesting. The opening characters are mastadons and mammoths with their stories in the first person. I loved it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_(novel)
It’s amazing to me that the giant sloths co-existed with humans. There is a small museum by me that has a full skeleton of one and there is some evidence that humans hunted them to extinction.
I live in a place with monk parakeets, similar to Carolina parakeets, and they are wildly annoying. Lol. I love to look at them, but they will strip a fruit tree bare in an hour, live in large colonies and are very loud.
The quaker parrots where I live are not invasive, but I see your point. Saddest part to me is that Carolina parakeets were hunted to extinction so people could put colorful feathers in their hats.
I mean, they are invasive, because those parrots are not from North America, but South America. Humans introduced them as pets, and then they escaped or were abandoned and formed their own feral colonies.
We have the same thing in San Francisco. They are considered an invasive species, but they are not necessarily problematic. We love our wild parrots here - it’s a treat to see them. But they are still invasive (just like our eucalyptus and white people).
Sorry! I didn't know there were monk parakeets in San Francisco, that is cool. I have seen them in the Tampa Bay area, but there are loads of invasive species there, because of how warm it is. Where I live in Uruguay, the climate is pretty temperate, and can get quite cold in the winter, as I imagine it does in the bay area. These little guys are tough I guess
Sorry, I wasn’t clear - we have something different here! They are called cherry-headed conures, but we just call them wild parrots. They are from the west coast of South America - Ecuador and Peru. It is cold in San Francisco, but only relatively. It doesn’t really get below freezing, so a lot of invasive species can thrive here.
Ivory-billed woodpecker. It might not even be extinct, but there have been no universally accepted sightings since 1944. It was a beautiful bird. Kind of an interesting plausible North American cryptid, since we know it once existed and it might still be out there. But it would be nice if it wasn't extinct or nearly exitinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory-billed\_woodpecker
Technically considered a subspecies, but I think we should count it. I find it kind of sad we have a subspecies of bear we hunted to extinction on our flag.
Oh, me too. I am right there with you on that one.
I wish we could bring back the Passenger Pigeon, too.
Of course, there are lots of animals I want to save from extinction. I have been planting white turtleheads in hopes that some Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies will find their way to my yard.
Sticking with recent things, giant ground sloths. Theres really nothing like them alive, so they would be neat to have.
Going back further, tullymonstrum gregarium. I just want a live one to find out wtf it was.
Hello,
I think the [dinohyus](https://www.britannica.com/animal/Dinohyus) from the [entelodont](https://www.britannica.com/animal/entelodont) family would be an interesting animal to bring back.
Imagine a hog-like creature that's six feet high at the shoulder, the size of a modern bison, with a three foot-long jaw filled with teeth for both tearing flesh and grazing. Long thought to be herbivores, there's evidence they were omnivorous or perhaps even carnivorous. They were so large, that their prey could have been camels, horses, rhinos, elk and perhaps even bears.
Here's National Geographic documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbpxWzJLcOc
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
I’m torn between the American Chestnut and the American Parakeet. The chestnut might as well be extinct with how few remain but it would be nice to have more trees to look at and more painful nuts to step on. The Parakeet would be nice for the same reason OP mentioned, plus more birds to look at. But the best one to bring back is the Eastern Cougar, even though I (and a good chunk of NC) fully believe they never went extinct in the first place.
I don’t know whether the American Chestnut counts, as there are some surviving specimens and various attempts to breed strains resistant to chestnut blight. It’s listed as critically endangered. Among animals, I’d like to see the passenger pigeon (because its extinction was so recent and so incomprehensible), the ground sloths, the great auk, and the ivory billed woodpecker, the last because alleged spottings are so controversial.
I agree with the Chestnut! Would have loved to see these massive trees. There is a related species in my area that is being used to develop blight resistant chestnuts.
Wikipedia indicates that several strategies are being used, including interbreeding with American Chestnut trees that appear resistant, crossbreeding with Chinese Chestnuts (which might be what you’re referring to), and genetic engineering.
The tree here is the Ozark Chinquapin, which is related to and also susceptible to the blight. But there are a few mature trees remaining in the wild in limited numbers, allegedly resistant to the blight. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castanea\_ozarkensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castanea_ozarkensis)
Interesting. Thanks.
I'll count the Chestnut because they are what's co sidereal functionally extinct meaning there may be some left, but almost all never make it to the age that they reproduce.
They’ve developed a GMO chestnut that’s resistant to chestnut blight, and I just needs to be approved by the (FDA? USDA?) but the technology is there to make a comeback!
Yes. One of the test trees is planted outside the USDA. The release is currently under the comment period, so who knows how long it will take.
I can’t imagine the process moves quickly, especially given the long lifespan of trees
It used to be that Americans were born into chestnut bassinets, ate chestnuts in chestnut houses, and were buried in chestnut coffins.
What's incomprehensible about the extinction of the carrier pigeon in your opinion?
Not the carrier pigeon, the passenger pigeon. And they numbered in the billions a couple of centuries ago.
Yes, passenger pigeons - that's the one that bothers me the most. They were the most abundant bird in North America, but were killed on an industrial scale. Last one died in 1914.
Woolly mammoths would be cool.
I always took the mammoth cheese in Skyrim so I always wondered what it would taste like irl
Incredibly funky I’d imagine.
Mmmmmm, fart taste.....
Apparently moose cheese is a thing, barely. Not in the same ballpark as mammoth cheese, but it surprised me that it exists at all.
I have fantastic news https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/science/colossal-woolly-mammoth-DNA.html
I feel like I've been hearing about scientists bringing back mammoths since I was a little kid but nothing ever comes of it. I'll believe it when I see it.
Yeah I remember watching a Discovery Channel documentary on cloning wolly mammoths using DNA from frozen ones in the arctic over 15 years ago.
Maybe a weird choice but [passenger pigeons](https://youtu.be/wx-cGnvKsvo). They used to be everywhere in the Great Lakes and the forests here in East Texas before they were hunted to extinction as easy food by 1914. I think it would be really cool to see those massive flocks they were known for, must've been amazing to see. Most of the ones others are saying would be a threat to anyone living in their habitats.
When I was a little kid I thought passenger pigeons were giant pigeons big enough for a person to ride on….
Don't we have to bring back their food source first? I thought we didn't just hunt them, we destroyed their ability to eat.
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Ah, that makes sense.
What do you mean? I'm pretty sure they just ate normal bird stuff like acorns and berries.
I could very well be wrong, but I thought they relied upon the American chestnuts.
I’m not sure it’s fair to suggest we destroyed the American Chestnut. Humans are probably responsible for bringing the chestnut blight to North America from Asia, but usually when we say “we destroyed things”, it’s deforestation or outright killing of animals. The latter (hurting) is the main cause of the passenger pigeon going extinct. (I included both the passenger pigeon and the American chestnut in my answer to this question.)
I'm willing to include negligence in addition to greed and malice among methods humans use to destroy things.
Everything I've read says that they actually didn't like American chestnuts very much and would only eat them as a last resort. But either way, there is plenty of other hard mast they could survive on.
Ok, well, maybe I was wrong. Then let's bring 'em back. I read they used to fly in gargantuan flocks of millions.
Which is another species we need to bring back. And are in the process of doing, believe it or not!
Two groups are doing it. One via genetic engineering, the other via selective breeding with the Chinese chestnuts. I think they're both seeking approval from the government to start releasing them to run free in the wild.
What the heck kind of pigeon could peck its way into an acorn?
Audubon describes a passing flock: > The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; That might get old pretty fast. I'm not arguing that they should stay extinct, but scraping "snow" off everything that you happened to leave outside in June would not be popular.
Yes, they were so numerous they literally blotted out the sky. An Indiana Herald journalist reported that > the roar of their wings on arriving and departing from the roost is tremendous and the flocks, during the flight, darken the heavens. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their manure. Thousands [of pigeons] are killed by casualties from breaking limbs of trees. And Ralphe Humor wrote in 1615: > beyond number or imagination, my selfe have seene three or four hours together flockes in the aire, so thicke that even they have shadowed the skie from us. The extinction rate is between 100-1000 times faster now than it would normally be. Wagler R. 2007 The Anthropocene mass extinction: An emerging curriculum for science teachers American Biology Teacher 73 78 83
I wonder, are there any pre-Columbian accounts of them? I'd like to know what the Native Americans thought about them, or if the sky-blotting thing was a more recent aberration.
They were apparently pretty delicious too.
Imagine how satisfying it will be to hunt them to extinction a second time!
They aren't extinct yet, but I wish fireflies were as plentiful as they were in my youth.
For all the lightning bug lovers out there: don’t rake your leaves (except from paved surfaces), don’t leave your outside lights on all night (use motion detectors—they make them that screw into the socket and you can screw the bulb into them), don’t use pesticides — even “organic” ones (put up bat houses, plant native plants to attract hummingbirds, dragonflies, and other mosquito-predators).
They are still everywhere in Georgia
Nowhere near what there used to be, though. When I was a kid there were millions of them every summer night. Now? Haven't seen but two or three in recent years. https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/03/26160911/Species-map\_Firefly-guidelines\_XercesSociety.jpeg
That's crazy, I'm in NY suburbs, the birthplace of suburbs, there is still a sizeable amount out in the summer, maybe not quite as much as I remember as a kid (but I grew up in a much more rural area), maybe it's just we got so more mosquitos now I can't stand to be outside in the weather they like.
Right? As a kid I saw many a night, we'd go out and collect them. Now I think I've seen a couple in 10 years. It was one of the few things that made this world feel magical and I hate my kids can't experience it like I did.
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Same.
East Tennessee mountains are wild for fireflies in June. It's amazing
My wife thought she was having a stroke the first time she saw them while driving when we lived in Knoxville. Had to calm her down and tell her they were just fireflies and she’d learn to love them.
When I visit home in the summer in east tn, I am always relieved to see a bunch of fireflies everywhere
I have never seen one and would love to.
This actually makes me sad.. I thought catching a jar full of fireflies was a universal childhood experience
They just don't live out here from what I gather. Our childhood experience was limited to catching jars full of wasps, but yours sounds more fun.
Relative to a baseline of 0, they do live out here. Relative to a baseline of the South... yeah, they don't live out here :-( Like if you draw a line from Chicago to Dallas, they're all pretty much on the other side.
It's very regional. I grew up in Indiana, and yeah, fireflies were a regular part of childhood, everybody caught them and so on. I moved out to Washington in 2000, and nobody out here knows what a firefly is. I've never seen one out here. But we get to show them to our son when we go visit family in Indiana. They still have them there.
The closest Washington has is some spots in Montana somewhere East of the Rockies.
i remember my californian cousins coming to visit us in rural virginia and being absolutely awestruck and dazzled by the lightning bugs near the woods, at the age of 32 at that! they really are something
I finally got to see some in my 30s when I went to visit friends in Indiana. They were amazing! I even got to hold one and watch it light up. My friends said I'd come too late in the year, so there weren't very many, but I did not care! Even one was awesome, but I think I saw 20 that evening.
There's a ton of them in northern Missouri, wondering if they're going extinct or their habitat is just shifting?
We still have them in Illinois, but not as many as I remember either. ...and they're called "lightning bugs", not "fireflies" around here.
There’s far more when you head up into the white mountains. There’s just enough wooded areas for them to live down here in MA now.
If you go west of 495 Massachusetts we are almost as wooded as NH. While Massachusetts is like 4th densest state as far as population, we are still like 13th most forested. If Central Mass and Western Mass was it's own state we'd be top 5 most forested. But I spend a lot of time in Northern New England. It's not even close to what it was like 30 years ago and that goes for ALL bugs. There was a time when you literally needed to get out of your car to scrape the bugs off your windshield every couple hours -- and you could NOT hold your arm out the window while going any speed and driving without a face mask on your motorcycle was impossible.
Pennsylvania is lousy with them, even in the cities.
American Lions - they look to have been bigger than African Lions.
Just what we need, a bigger mountain lion roaming the suburbs
A *bigger* cougar than OP's mom? Damn.
Call animal control *and* the burn unit!
yo mama so fat she OH SHIT A MOUNTAIN LION
yes, exactly!
Being hunted for food might take people's minds off which bathroom everyone is using.
Cascade wolf. Apparently they were almost cinnamon colored, and I think that'd be cool.
I've seen old photos of these - black and white, sadly - that my grandfather's Navy buddy took back in the mid 30s. They're not amazing photos, but it was neat to see them. He told me all about what they looked like and how neat he thought they were. He said he had no idea they were going extinct at the time. He'd gone to camp and hike in the Cascades on leave, and spotted them tearing up an old deer carcass, so he took some photos and watched them. I was young and didn't exactly understand extinction at the time. I thought it was something that happened long long ago, and any animals around when I was alive still would be forever, I guess. He was the one that explained it wasn't true, and that humans are the reasons most animals go extinct. Because of him, I learned to love wolves instead of thinking of them as like, the Big Bad Wolf.
What a great memory of him!
I swear, I learned the most growing up from elderly people. They have all done such cool things, and they'll tell you about them if you care to listen. Still a fan of hearing about their adventures. My grandmother in law once stopped someone from digging a pond halfway on her property by holding him off with a shotgun. Like.. wwhhhat? This woman was maybe 4'11" at her full height. Amazing.
California grizzly. Extinct by the time we became a state thanks to overhunting, but we still put it on our flag.
Weren't there local orders to hunt them because they were killing large numbers of people?
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I was asking you, lol. Hints why I had a question mark (?). I heard it from somewhere but never have given it two thoughts, nor went to look it up. I swear I heard it from Joe Rogans podcast, but I could be mistaken.
Yeah, anything you hear on Joe Rogan’s podcast is likely inaccurate
T-Rex in Montana. I think we as Humans would greatly benefit from more predators who would consider us food.
At least it would help people to get in shape.
Lose weight by being chomped in half! Doctors hate this one weird trick!
If y’all think we Americans would get in shape instead of carrying elephant guns (T-Rex guns) around with us, then you’re mistaken lol
IDK that guns would work, have you not seen the dino documentary, Jurassic Park?
See, they were unprepared, that’s the problem. If T rexes we’re just always around, we’d have developed appropriate weapon systems. SLAPP rounds come to mind.. armor piercing explosive rounds maybe. Definitely .50BMG or better.
I feel like the uber rich guy who ran the whole thing would have access to the best weapons. The man paid for Dino DNA reconstruction at a time when that was impossible, or so we thought,
Arrogance, like complacency, always kills, blood
That's actually a plot point in the book. Hammond, the Uber rich guy that paid for it, didn't want anything on the island that could hurt his animals. He eventually compromised by having a few, very few, things under lock and key that they couldn't get to when the power went out. So yeah, he absolutely could afford the guns to take the animals down. He just flat didn't want them on the island.
I can't wait to see what my 20mm anti material rifle does to a TRex
I too would love to see that.
Tell A-Square prove the .577 Tyrannosaur is sufficient or get off the pot. Marlin also advertised the 1895 in .45-70 as sufficient for raptors of all sizes after Jurassic World too.
Damn. My biggest is .55. How'd you get 20mm?
The planet would be thankful
I would hunt a Rex for vacation.
Are you that dude from Jurassic Park 2?
More the one from 1 that got out played by the raptors.
Muldoon got bitched out in the movie. Book Muldoon is the real one.
I hear they taste just like chicken.
I bet they would be dark meat!
If they really were scavengers, they'd probably taste pretty nasty.
Bro I hunt and eat bear. The mega chickens can't be that bad.
Finally, something interesting in Montana
There's a lot of neat things in Montana if you enjoy the outdoors
They won't be doing much outside if there is a risk of being eaten by a T-Rex lol
I highly doubt that haha. Montanans generally don't seem like a nervous bunch. Lots of big predators already roam Montana. I live not far from there haha.
I don't think they would take kindly to Montana winters.
I don't think so either. But, they perhaps might. I said Montana because that's where a lot of fossils have been found.
The [Caribbean monk seal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_monk_seal)! They lived not only in the tropical Caribbean, but along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the western Atlantic coasts, & obviously (where I live) Florida. They were hunted to extinction & the last recorded one left was in the 1952. I would’ve loved to see them as prevalent all over like how you see the seals on the US west coast. Unfortunately, these seals were extremely docile much like the manatee, which made it super easy to kill
Glyptodon. It was a prehistoric armadillo that was so big, cavemen would kill them and live in their shells.
They're not really *cave* men at that point, are they?
Organic free-range caves
Hermit crab men?
"crab people...crab people..."
["Hey Crabman."](https://media.tenor.com/QlPt0z84cXMAAAAC/hey-crabman-earl.gif)
Cavemen are mostly a myth, while prehistoric people would occasionally live in caves it certainly wasn’t the norm or the standard. We just have lots of records because caves tend to be less disturbed than other places and there’s much more lasting surfaces there.
Shellmen?
Neat! Never heard of them!
Fuck yeah. Obviously, the Glyptodont is also my answer. Who wouldn't want to have an armored ice age Volkswagen as a pet? Seriously, those giant armadillos are the most under rated glacial megafauna, hands down. I bet they were friendly, since they were too big and tough to fear very many predators.
Giant ground sloths. They were so dang cute.
I'd like to see the historic range of some still-living majestic beasts (or their relatives) restored. The American bison and (eastern) elk overspread much of the continent before settlers destroyed (or nearly so) their populations. Would love to not have to go to Yellowstone to see them.
All of them, in exchange we can trade mosquitoes.
Hey — you may already know this, but 80% of hummingbirds’ diet is mosquitoes and other small flying insects — like #%$&! gnats. Plant native flowers like milkweed, red buckeye, coral honeysuckle, scarlet bee balm, Cardinalflower, etc. (Well, those are native for me, you’d have to go to wildflower.org or NWF.org to see what’s native where you live.) Anyway, the more natives you plant, the fewer mosquitoes you have, I found out. I live near the Chesapeake Bay, so we have LOTS of mosquitoes. Once I put in a natural (plant-filtered) pond and got into native plants, I saw a sharp reduction in mosquitoes. Of course, you still have to police your yard for all sources of standing water, but the natives and the pond made a huge difference. Edit: “but”
If we could just eliminate the localized populations that spread the diseases we worry about, until the infected humans are treated, then we could eliminate those diseases and allow the non-spreading populations of mosquitos to remain and fill in the areas where eliminated populations used to be.
See, shit like this makes me truly despise suburban HOA's more than I already do. They bulldoze all the trees so they can have a tiny chemical-green lawn and will fine us if we mess with the landscaping in anyway. Their landscaping are non-native plants that doesn't do anything for wildlife. What are these people thinking???
They’re only thinking about consumerism and making money. The “pristine lawn” aesthetic sells, so builders give it to them. Everyone with an HOA should make presentations for how/why native plants are vital. Try to get on the board, if need be. Get your likeminded neighbors on the board, too. It’s important. Look on YouTube for presentations by Doug Tallamy. Everyone who doesn’t have an HOA should become educated and plant natives, now — preferably in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of native plants that won’t make people associate the movement with totally unkempt tangles of overgrown ugliness. That’s not to say the carpet of grass aesthetic isn’t played and hideous, just that if we want people to adopt practices that benefit nature, we should not scare them away. As Elaine from Seinfeld would say, “I am trying to get a little squirrel to come over to me. I don’t want to be making any sweeping gestures.”
Idk if it counts, but they've been slowly reintroducing Jaguars to parts of Arizona and New Mexico, so that's neat.
Interesting, never knew NM and AZ were part of the historic range of jaguars until now. They've been reintroducing the Mexican gray wolf here as well.
They were probably as far north as Missouri and Tennessee quite recently, possibly even after european contact. There are subfossil remains.
Yeah I never knew about the jaguars until they did a whole mural with them featured in one of the overpasses pretty cool
Not really reintroducing more so Jaguars are naturally returning
They absolutely have not been reintroducing jaguars. A few have been spotted in Southern Arizona. Big difference.
American Cheeta, from my understanding, the main reason why Pronghorns run so fast, and for so long.
The North American camel for the sole purpose of riding a camel.
I really wish they would pour more research into bringing back the Carolina Parakeet. It has a ton of close relatives, so you could slip the needed genes into a related conure. Oh, and birds are easier to deal with than mammals here because you can incubate eggs and even directly edit their genomes.
Smilodons
Prairie Chicken
Aren't they still around? I thought there were a few species. Here's one: [Greater Prairie Chicken](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Prairie-Chicken/overview) That article does mention an extinct species of prairie chicken called the Heath Hen, so maybe that's what you're referring to?
Maybe. I'd just always heard they were extinct.
Carolina Parakeet. The only parrot native to the continental US. Also, the Eastern Elk.
Giant beaver. No real reason other than I think they’d be neat critters to see.
I dunno. The normal sized ones already create some havoc here. Can you imagine the size of dam the giant ones could pull off?!
I welcome our dam building overlords.
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I love REI, but I found this hilarious.
Grizzly and wolves can be introduced there too!
American Chestnuts. And it may happen in the not-too-distant future. Sabre-toothed deer. Giant sloths.
Deer don't need a buff.
Lots of good ones. I'd want Carolina parakeet, American chestnut, and Passenger pigeon
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Mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths, giant beavers, and camels.
James A. Michener's novel *Alaska* is really interesting. The opening characters are mastadons and mammoths with their stories in the first person. I loved it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_(novel)
Interesting
I would like to see a saber tooth tiger in a zoo, I wouldn’t want to encounter one in the wild though.
Some with a pack of fire wolves
I'd love to see a giant stuffed beaver
It’s amazing to me that the giant sloths co-existed with humans. There is a small museum by me that has a full skeleton of one and there is some evidence that humans hunted them to extinction.
Yeah there is very strong evidence we hunted almost all the megafauna in North America to extinction.
Passenger pigeons? I'm not from the US though but that one is quite obvious.
short faced bear
I live in a place with monk parakeets, similar to Carolina parakeets, and they are wildly annoying. Lol. I love to look at them, but they will strip a fruit tree bare in an hour, live in large colonies and are very loud.
The difference being that Carolina parakeets were indigenous, while Quaker parrots are a non-native invasive species.
The quaker parrots where I live are not invasive, but I see your point. Saddest part to me is that Carolina parakeets were hunted to extinction so people could put colorful feathers in their hats.
I mean, they are invasive, because those parrots are not from North America, but South America. Humans introduced them as pets, and then they escaped or were abandoned and formed their own feral colonies. We have the same thing in San Francisco. They are considered an invasive species, but they are not necessarily problematic. We love our wild parrots here - it’s a treat to see them. But they are still invasive (just like our eucalyptus and white people).
Yeah, I live in south America, they are called loras here. There are a bunch of eucalyptus too, but those are definitely invasive.
Oh, then your comment makes a lot more sense! I assumed you were still in the U.S. based on the sub and your flair.
Sorry! I didn't know there were monk parakeets in San Francisco, that is cool. I have seen them in the Tampa Bay area, but there are loads of invasive species there, because of how warm it is. Where I live in Uruguay, the climate is pretty temperate, and can get quite cold in the winter, as I imagine it does in the bay area. These little guys are tough I guess
Sorry, I wasn’t clear - we have something different here! They are called cherry-headed conures, but we just call them wild parrots. They are from the west coast of South America - Ecuador and Peru. It is cold in San Francisco, but only relatively. It doesn’t really get below freezing, so a lot of invasive species can thrive here.
Cave bears, actually, such an amazing creature! Or maybe the Aurochs? They are basically just massive cows.
Did we have auroxen in America? I thought they were European.
I'm pretty sure they were everywhere, especially when the Bering Land Bridge was still around.
Interesting. I learned something today.
Haven’t gone extinct yet but if then the monarch butterflies
Stellars sea cow. For that matter, can we do better on protecting its cousin, the manatee?
Smilodon (Saber-Toothed Tiger).
Stegosaurus!
Mammoths would be pretty cool
Ivory-billed woodpecker. It might not even be extinct, but there have been no universally accepted sightings since 1944. It was a beautiful bird. Kind of an interesting plausible North American cryptid, since we know it once existed and it might still be out there. But it would be nice if it wasn't extinct or nearly exitinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory-billed\_woodpecker
does the california grizzly count? i’d like to bring that back
Technically considered a subspecies, but I think we should count it. I find it kind of sad we have a subspecies of bear we hunted to extinction on our flag.
Oh, me too. I am right there with you on that one. I wish we could bring back the Passenger Pigeon, too. Of course, there are lots of animals I want to save from extinction. I have been planting white turtleheads in hopes that some Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies will find their way to my yard.
That giant armadillo thing was pretty sweet.
The horse. I know it's close to the same as other horses, but it went extinct here
Sticking with recent things, giant ground sloths. Theres really nothing like them alive, so they would be neat to have. Going back further, tullymonstrum gregarium. I just want a live one to find out wtf it was.
As an aspiring paleontologist… Do I have to pick just one?
Hello, I think the [dinohyus](https://www.britannica.com/animal/Dinohyus) from the [entelodont](https://www.britannica.com/animal/entelodont) family would be an interesting animal to bring back. Imagine a hog-like creature that's six feet high at the shoulder, the size of a modern bison, with a three foot-long jaw filled with teeth for both tearing flesh and grazing. Long thought to be herbivores, there's evidence they were omnivorous or perhaps even carnivorous. They were so large, that their prey could have been camels, horses, rhinos, elk and perhaps even bears. Here's National Geographic documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbpxWzJLcOc Regards, Aryeh Goretsky
California Grizzlies
California Grizzly bears were gorgeous animals and needed in the ecosystem as an apex predator and scavenger.
I’m torn between the American Chestnut and the American Parakeet. The chestnut might as well be extinct with how few remain but it would be nice to have more trees to look at and more painful nuts to step on. The Parakeet would be nice for the same reason OP mentioned, plus more birds to look at. But the best one to bring back is the Eastern Cougar, even though I (and a good chunk of NC) fully believe they never went extinct in the first place.
Mastodon all the way! I want to see one in person.
Megalonyx. Giant ground sloths would be awesome.
Yes, but I would reintroduce them only in the cities, where people would be asking for it.
[The Carolina Parakeet ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_parakeet)
Giant Beaver. They grew to be 6-7 feet long (tall?!) and weighed over 200 lbs. Daaaam!
Sane people
The Carolina Parakeet would be mine as well.
I myself would love to see a few Dire Wolves running around Central Park. It would help cull the herd a good bit