--- title: Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine and more — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine and more», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Extinct means gone for ever: not one of that kind is left anywhere, and no zoo, no film and no wis --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Extinct forever: the dodo, the passeng… # Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine and more Lesson 281 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/0/) — Extinct means gone for ever: not one of that kind is left anywhere, and no zoo, no film and no wish can bring it back as it was. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/1/) — The dodo is the famous example: cartoons show it as a silly bird, but it was a big flightless pigeon on the island of Mauritius that had never met a predator, so it had no reason to fear or fly. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/2/) — Then sailors arrived in the 1600s with rats, pigs and monkeys that ate dodos and their eggs on the ground, and by about 1690 the dodo was gone. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/3/) — Most kinds of living things that ever lived are extinct, so dying out is natural, but today species are vanishing much faster than normal because of people, and that speed is what worries scientists. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/4/) — The dodo was a big flightless pigeon from Mauritius, with small wings it could not fly with, that lived with no predators; sailors, rats, pigs and monkeys arrived in the 1600s, and it was gone by about 1690. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/5/) — Dodos were not stupid: they had never met predators, and animals on islands often lose their fear and their flight; the real problem was the animals people brought. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/6/) — In the 1800s billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of North America; mass hunting and forest cutting killed them all, and the last one, Martha, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/7/) — The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was a striped, meat-eating marsupial, an animal whose babies grow in a pouch, shaped like a wolf; farmers hunted it for rewards, and the last known one died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/8/) — People still report thylacine sightings, but none have been proven. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/9/) — Steller's sea cow was a giant, gentle cousin of the manatee, up to about 8 metres long; Europeans found it near Russia's islands in 1741 and hunted it to extinction in 27 years. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/10/) — The great auk was a bird of the North Atlantic with small wings it could not fly with and the first bird to be called a penguin; the last known pair was killed in Iceland in 1844, and sailors later gave the name penguin to the birds in the south. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/11/) — The quagga was a zebra with stripes only on its front half; it was hunted out in South Africa, and the last died in a zoo in 1883. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/12/) — DNA showed the quagga was a kind of plains zebra, and a project has bred zebras that look like quaggas again. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/14/) — The baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin, lived only in China's Yangtze River; fishing nets, boats and dams caused its loss, and it was declared probably extinct after a search in 2006 found none. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/15/) — More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct, but today they vanish much faster than normal because of people. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/16/) — Animals thought extinct that turn up alive again are called Lazarus species, like the coelacanth fish, the takahe bird of New Zealand and the Lord Howe Island stick insect. - ← previous: [Evolution myths put right: monkeys, the strongest and missing links](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/280-evolution-myths-put-right-monkeys-the-strongest-and-missing-links/) - next →: [Comeback stories: bald eagles, humpback whales, condors and the kakapo](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/282-comeback-stories-bald-eagles-humpback-whales-condors-and-the-kakapo/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)