ENTER: Misc Avatar Contest: "Extinction!"

Thank you, everyone, for all the Votes in the last Avatar Contest. And thanks to everybody who entered, and congrats to Jetfire and Zion, who came this close to knocking me off my tenuous perch.

And now the time has come for our next Contest. The Theme this time will be your "Favorite Extinct Animal." Dinosaurs are the obvious example of extinct animals, but the possibilities go far beyond that, from the Hallucigenia of the Burgess Shale to post-Dino mammalian megafauna such as the Giant Sloth or any of those weird Elephant species right up to recent losses such as the Irish Elk or the Dodo. The representation of the animal can be any type of drawing or cartoon or statue or model; the only requirement is that the animal be extinct (to the best of our knowledge) and be cool enough to get Votes.

For example, my favorite extinct animal is the Trilobite. Any of these would be valid entries:







Also, all entries must conform to Board Rules for Avatars: Maximum 140x140 and under 70kB. And, since this is a Miscellaneous contest, please no general media or SF&F avatars.

Now let's get out there and bring some dead things back to life!

 

Okay, officially. Awesome. Thread.

 

Caribbean Monk Seal, officially declared extinct on June 6th, 2008 although the last recorded account of the species was made at Serranilla Bank between Honduras and Jamaica in 1952.

 

^^ That is very sad.

Thanks, Gep.

 

Anomalocaris, the largest known predator during the Cambrian Explosion.

 

^^ Love those Cambrian life forms. Ever read Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould?

 

I have not. I do, however, love those Cambrian life forms, too.

 

Carcharodon megalodon:



[edited to add] Just to prevent any correction, I know megalodon did not coexist with the dinosaurs, but that book cover was too cool to pass up.

 

Nice Smilodon you got there.

Some of the speculation has been a bit dated by further research, but overall it's still worth reading (and the speculation is still interesting). Gould is a great science writer, a Romantic on a par with Sagan though his interests lie in other areas.

Looks like we're gonna need a bigger Thread.

 

The Dodo!

 

Holy crap is right!

 

The Megalonyx

 

Alas, poor Dodo.

And yet it was always kind to Snuffleupagus.

Soon to be seen in the ScyFy Channel movie Megalonyx Versus Giant Octopus.

 

Oh, that just breaks my heart.

ETA:
I always had a fondness for the triceratops (I so identified with Alan in Jurassic Park when he lies against the Tric grinning like a tickled 8-year-old ... )

 

Um, this is awesome. My friend Aleida and I have this thing... One night we were hanging out in the commuter lounge at my college at like 3 in the morning, and we were talking and having fun, and she was laying on one of the couches, so close to the edge that she looked like she was just about to fall off. When I said something to her about it, she said that she always lays on the edge of things like that, that she always is poised at "the brink of extinction". Now we, being overtired and whatnot, found that to be extremely hilarious and we pretty much died with laughter. Then, after making that connection we decided that anytime something is extremely funny that we basically die from laughing that we would call it "going extinct". She greatly approves of this contest's theme.

Edit:

 

Oh, yeah, one of the Classics.

We're getting some great entries here.

 

Just to cheer everyone up a bit - I found this on wiki - it's a list of the Lazarus species - species thought to be extinct and then found again. Maybe they were out shopping when the census man called round...


Now back to picking an actual extinct animal for an avatar