# Which extinct animal should we bring back?

> Ice Age giants, island birds and one animal that has been gone for 66 million years. Pick with the consequences in mind.

*By YPB Team · Published September 27, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-extinct-animal-should-we-bring-back*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Woolly mammoth** — score 1000/1000
   The Ice Age elephant that survived on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago.
2. **Quagga** — score 551/1000
   A half-striped zebra of South Africa that vanished in 1883.
3. **Passenger pigeon** — score 509/1000
   Once North America's most numerous bird, extinct since Martha died in 1914.
4. **Woolly rhinoceros** — score 509/1000
   The shaggy two-horned rhino of the Ice Age steppe.
5. **Glyptodon** — score 509/1000
   A car-sized armadillo relative with a domed shell.
6. **Steller's sea cow** — score 407/1000
   A giant Bering Sea manatee relative hunted out within 27 years of its discovery.
7. **Great auk** — score 407/1000
   The North Atlantic's flightless seabird, last seen alive in 1844.
8. **Aurochs** — score 344/1000
   The wild ancestor of domestic cattle, extinct in Poland since 1627.
9. **Irish elk** — score 344/1000
   A giant deer with antlers spanning up to 3.6 metres.
10. **Thylacine** — score 271/1000
   The striped Tasmanian marsupial predator whose last known animal died in 1936.
11. **Moa** — score 271/1000
   New Zealand's giant flightless birds, some over 3.5 metres tall.
12. **Megatherium** — score 271/1000
   A South American ground sloth the size of an elephant.
13. **Dodo** — score 271/1000
   The flightless Mauritius pigeon wiped out by the late 1600s.
14. **Haast's eagle** — score 185/1000
   The largest eagle ever known, which hunted moa in New Zealand.
15. **Tyrannosaurus rex** — score 0/1000
   The Late Cretaceous tyrant, gone for 66 million years and far beyond the reach of any DNA.
16. **Dire wolf** — score 0/1000
   The heavy Ice Age wolf of the Americas, best known from the La Brea Tar Pits.
17. **Smilodon** — score 0/1000
   The saber-toothed cat that hunted Ice Age bison and ground sloths.

Tags: nature, science, animals, extinct animals