Quagga

Extinct circa 1883 CE • Cape Province, South Africa

"Well into the nineteenth century, it was plentiful throughout southern South Africa; while it was being heavily hunted for meat and trophies, and its habitat appropriated for farms and ranches, the event of its extinction in the wild went almost unnoticed. The last wild quagga was killed in 1878. Once there were herds of quaggas in South Africa, and then there weren't. For a while, quaggas were kept in zoos, but the last captive specimen died in Amsterdam's Artis Magistra Zoo on August 12, 1883."

Richard Ellis, No Turning Back: the Life and Death of Animal Species (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004), 145.

Image: Quagga, F. York, Regent's Park ZOO, London, 1870.