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Who We’ve Lost: 12 Animals We’ve Driven to Extinction in the Last 50 Years

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The rise of humanity has coincided with the decline of many other species—so many, in fact, that some experts think we might be in the middle of a sixth major extinction. The number of species that we know have gone extinct are likely dwarfed by the many that we don’t know about, of course, and the loss seems to be showing no signs of slowing: One recent report from the World Wildlife Fund estimates that the overall number of vertebrate wildlife has declined by more than half since the 1970s (although some scientists are skeptical of the report’s methods). 

“If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news,” Ken Norris, director of science for the Zoological Society of London (which collaborated with the WWF on the new analysis) told the Guardian. “But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live.”

Here’s a look at a few of the species that we believe (to the best of our scientific ability) have gone extinct in the last half century:

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