What colorful North American parrot, the only parrot native to the eastern US, went extinct in 1918?
Answer
Carolina parakeet
79 Extinct Animals Trivia Questions with Answers
79 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?
Extinct Animals trivia covers vanished birds, mammals, marine species, and Ice Age predators from around the world. Questions may take you from the Chatham Islands merganser and the colorful Carolina parakeet to the Caribbean monk seal, the Yangtze River dolphin, and the Eurasian cave lion recorded in prehistoric art.
Expect a blend of recent historical extinctions and deep-prehistory discoveries. You may identify the black-and-white Labrador duck, the Atlas bear of North Africa, or the saber-toothed cat genus Smilodon, while considering how geography, habitat change, hunting, and other pressures shaped their disappearance. This category works well for natural-history classrooms, conservation discussions, pub quizzes, family game nights, and fossil enthusiasts.
What seal species from the Caribbean Sea was last reliably sighted in 1952 and declared extinct?
Answer
Caribbean monk seal
What Galápagos tortoise subspecies, whose last known individual was Lonesome George, went extinct in 2012?
Answer
Pinta Island tortoise
What extinct canid endemic to the Falkland Islands was the only land mammal native to the islands?
Answer
Falkland Islands wolf
What extinct tiger subspecies from Java was last sighted in the 1970s?
Answer
Javan tiger
What extinct proboscidean from North America had low-crowned teeth and a flattened skull?
Answer
American mastodon
What large sirenian from the North Pacific was hunted to extinction in 1768?
Answer
Steller's sea cow
What extinct ibex from the Pyrenees was cloned but died shortly after birth in 2003?
Answer
Pyrenean ibex
What Australian wallaby with a crescent mark on its thigh went extinct in 1956?
Answer
Crescent nail-tail wallaby
What bat from Christmas Island went extinct in 2009 due to habitat loss?
Answer
Christmas Island pipistrelle
What fish from the Yangtze River, one of the largest freshwater fish, was declared extinct in 2022?
Answer
Chinese paddlefish
What wolf from Japan, also known as the Honshū wolf, went extinct in 1905?
Answer
Japanese wolf
What marsupial from Australia, known as the pig-footed bandicoot, went extinct in the 1950s?
Answer
Pig-footed bandicoot
What extinct cormorant from the Bering Sea was flightless and last seen in 1850?
Answer
Spectacled cormorant
What flightless wren from Stephens Island, New Zealand, went extinct in 1895?
Answer
Stephens Island wren
What owl from New Zealand that had a laughing call went extinct by 1914?
Answer
Laughing owl
What deer from Thailand with branched antlers went extinct in 1938?
Answer
Schomburgk's deer
What flightless bird from Rodrigues Island went extinct by 1778?
Answer
Rodrigues solitaire
What Ice Age rhinoceros with a thick coat of hair went extinct about 10,000 years ago?
Answer
Woolly rhinoceros
What Australian frog species that incubated tadpoles in its stomach went extinct in the 1980s?
Answer
Gastric-brooding Frog
What leopard subspecies from an African island was considered extinct by the early 2000s?
Answer
Zanzibar Leopard
What clouded leopard subspecies from Taiwan was officially declared extinct in 2013?
Answer
Formosan Clouded Leopard
Extinct Animals trivia — quick answers
What are good extinct animals trivia questions?
Good questions identify extinct animals by habitat, appearance, date, or scientific clues. Examples include the Carolina parakeet, Chatham Islands merganser, Labrador duck, Atlas bear, Caribbean monk seal, baiji, cave lion, and Smilodon. A strong quiz can mix recent extinctions with Ice Age and Pleistocene species.
How hard is extinct animals trivia?
The difficulty ranges from easy to challenging. Familiar players may recognize saber-toothed cats or cave lions, while harder questions involve obscure island birds, regional subspecies, historical last sightings, and distinctions between a common name, a species, and a broader extinct genus.
What was the Carolina parakeet?
The Carolina parakeet was a brightly colored parrot native to eastern North America and the only parrot species native to that region of the United States. It declined because of habitat loss, hunting, and other human pressures. The last known individual died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
What was the baiji?
The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was a freshwater cetacean found in China's Yangtze River. Its population declined sharply because of fishing-related injuries, vessel traffic, pollution, and habitat disruption. A 2006 survey failed to find surviving animals, leading researchers to describe the species as functionally extinct, though its formal status has remained debated.
What was Smilodon?
Smilodon was an extinct genus of saber-toothed cats that lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene. Its best-known species, Smilodon fatalis, had exceptionally long upper canine teeth and a powerful, robust body. Smilodon disappeared near the end of the Ice Age, roughly 10,000 years ago, amid major environmental and ecological changes.