Gone Forever: An Alphabet of Extinct Animals

Creatures of all types and sizes have been vanishing at an alarming rate. Here, science teacher and writer Sandra Markle and her husband, William, present twenty-six animals that have become extinct in recorded history, one for each letter of the alphabet -- from aurochs, the wild cattle that appear in cave paintings, to Burchell's zebra, which roamed the South African grasslands until the mid-1800s. Along the way we also meet the elephant bird from Madagascar, the Barbary lion, which the Romans captured for their sports arenas, and the Xerces blue butterfly, which disappeared from California in 1941. Felipe Davalos has painted a stunning portrait of each of these animals as it appeared before it was gone forever.