570 vanished lives

457Mesozoic

Incisor, tusk-like and cheek teeth formed an unusual dinosaur dentition.

458Mesozoic

It hunted through polar night, though its supposedly dwarf size remains uncertain.

459Cenozoic

Three meters tall with a massive beak, it was among the heaviest birds.

460Cenozoic

A seventy-centimeter skull and hooked beak armed one of the largest terror birds.

461Cenozoic

A one-and-a-half-meter penguin lived near the equator with a spear-like beak.

462Cenozoic

At almost 1.8 meters, it was a giant diver on a warmer Antarctic coast.

463Recently extinct

Strong legs carried a medium moa whose feathers resembled shaggy hair.

464Recently extinct

This giant flightless pigeon fought with bony wing knobs and was the dodo's closest relative.

465Cenozoic

A bear-sized Caribbean ground sloth survived near the period of human arrival.

466Cenozoic

A mobile snout, huge claws and strange forelimbs belonged to a marsupial unlike any tapir.

467Cenozoic

A cow-sized wombat relative carried a broad snout and heavy limbs.

468Cenozoic

Three pairs of skull bosses and long canines crowned a rhino-sized herbivore.

469Cenozoic

A short face, tusk-like canines and grinding cheeks marked a herd-forming artiodactyl relative.

470Cenozoic

Massive jaws and rounded carnassials crushed bone, though it was not a modern hyena.

471Cenozoic

Huge cutting teeth came from a hyaenodont predator heavier than a modern lion.

472Cenozoic

A flexible proboscidean crossed many habitats and ate mixed vegetation.

473Precambrian

Complex branching and septa make it a candidate early eukaryote or fungus.

474Precambrian

Cup-like bodies linked by filaments have been read as fungi or a microbial colony.

475Paleozoic

Tiny sac-like structures in coal balls resemble an early ascomycete.

476Paleozoic

Fungal filaments surrounded cyanobacterium-like cells in an early lichen-style partnership.

477Precambrian

Circular carbon films may represent a giant single-celled eukaryote traditionally called an alga.

478Precambrian

Sausage-shaped carbon films may be macroalgae or another early eukaryote.

479Paleozoic

A palm-like crown belonged not to a fern but to an extinct heterosporous seed-plant relative.

480Paleozoic

Hollow jointed stems let an early horsetail relative grow as a tall shrub or small tree.