10 Weirdest Extinct Creatures

Meet the guys with chin tusks, five eyes and claws bigger than their own face.

By Peter Austin /

A statistic that seems to get thrown around a lot when discussing extinction is that over 99% of the species that have ever lived on this earth are now gone forever. In one sense, we€™re probably quite lucky that that€™s the case. After all, if the dinosaurs hadn€™t been killed off, mammals may never have had the chance to become the dominant class of creatures that they are today. If Neanderthals hadn€™t died out, we€™d almost certainly be involved in an ongoing xenophobic war with them rather than getting along smoothly. We€™re really tolerant like that. However, we€™re also missing out on some amazing sights that were part of our ancestors€™ daily lives. Imagine if some of nature€™s long dead species were still around today; herds of majestic woolly mammoths migrating across a busy motorway; stumpy little dodos eating chips and pasties off high street pavements; enthralling Attenborough documentaries about the daily lives of the stegosaurus. And best of all, there would be a whole host of weirdos to stare at. Mother Nature has killed off over five billion species in total (with a little help from the human race) and some of them looked really, really strange.

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