Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds

Barbara Allen is a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia. Her books include Pigeon (2009), Animals in Religion (2016) and Pelican (2019), all published by Reaktion Books.

This is the sort of book you’d prefer didn’t have so many pages – the more there are, the less full our world is of great species. Those that have sadly gone from our lives should, and do, make us think harder about saving the rest, though – the book covers well known species like Dodo and Great Auk, as well as the likes of Spectacled Cormorant, with only seven stuffed specimens and two incomplete skeletons left on the planet. Other losses covered here include Heath Hen, Arabian Ostrich and Ivory-billed Woodpecker. There are many more lost species in here which we should never forget. - Bird Watching magazineLost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction by Allen profiles the great auk, passenger pigeon, and Saint Helena earwig, among other extinct creatures, exploring how their disappearances affected their ecosystems and provide insight into humanity’s relationship with nature. - Publishers WeeklyThis beautifully illustrated book serves as much as a simulacrum of private, deeply personal grief and loss as it is a repository of stories and histories. Allen has created a deliberate, well-documented archive . . . Allen revivifies extinct animals so that, briefly, they seem to breathe . . . By giving voices and representation to 31 extinct species, Allen shows how these creatures lived and how to listen wholeheartedly to them and the other species (estimates range from 20,000 to two million) that went extinct during the last century. - Library JournalBarbara Allen’s Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds is an inventive and beautiful hymn to what we have lost, all the while shining an urgent light of hope for the future. - Leah Kaminsky, author of We're All Going to Die and co-editor of Animals Make Us HumanThese stories of extinct creatures are comprehensively researched and imaginatively written. This book will enlighten and inspire those familiar with the subject and perhaps many who don’t yet know that they are interested. - Errol Fuller, author of Extinct Birds and Drawn from Paradise (co-authored with Sir David Attenborough)A scholarly and meditative tribute to the remarkable species that humans have driven to extinction. - Ross Piper, author of Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living CreaturesThis book brings together a selection of extinct species, many that have been pushed to global extinction in living memory or at least recently enough to have touched human culture, and tells their stories . . . Extinct species slip from our collective memories unless books such as this one bring them back to our attention and make us wonder whether our species could have done better. - Mark Avery nature blog

• PART ONEIntroductionChapter One: ExtinctionChapter Two: Memorializing Grief PART TWO: THE PORTRAITS The AurochsThe DodoThe Rodrigues SolitaireSteller's Sea Cow The Great AukThe Spectacled Cormorant (or Pallas's Cormorant)The Falkland Islands Wolf The Quagga The TarpanThe Rocky Mountain LocustThe Japanese Wolf (or Honshu Wolf)The Passenger Pigeon The Carolina ParakeetThe Syrian Wild Ass The Heath HenThe ThylacineThe Xerces Blue Butterfly The Arabian OstrichThe Ivory-Billed WoodpeckerThe St Helena EarwigThe Eskimo Curlew The Tecopa PupfishThe Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog and the Northern Gastric-Brooding Frog/Eungella Gastric-Brooding FrogThe Dusky Seaside Sparrow The Golden ToadThe Pyrenean Ibex The Baiji (Yangtze River) DolphinThe Pinta Island TortoiseThe Bramble Cay Melomys The O'ahu Tree Snail ReferencesBibliographyAcknowledgements