History Main / NotSoExtinct

** ''Franchise/XMen'': The Savage Land plays with this, as it is a LostWorld in the antarctic with LivingDinosaurs and other extinct animals, but as it was actually created ''during prehistory'' its wildlife cannot truly be said to have been extinct and revived. Instead, they were preserved from extinction and have carried on for millions of years as though the K-T meteor never hit.

* ''Franchise/JurassicPark'': The movies are rooted in this trope, as with the novels the first two films are based on. This trope is somewhat played with, though, as the revived dinosaurs are not perfect genetic revivals, but rather mutants created from incomplete dino DNA and LegoGenetics. First book hero Alan Grant calls them "genetically-engineered theme-park monsters", which is a particularly apt description of the hybrids seen in ''Film/JurassicWorld''.

* A species of date palm known to have gone extinct in the wild ~1500 years ago has been revived when Israeli researchers planted a seed recovered by an archaeological expedition. Unfortunately, the resulting tree is a male and so can't produce seeds of its own.

* ''TabletopGame/DinoHunt'': The "Relict Species" card allows a player to collect a dinosaur from a time period later than the normal range for its species. Justifed by the card's FlavorText, which notes that the fossil record (and thus our knowledge of when each species went extinct) is incomplete.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' revealed that some time after the original series the Klingon Empire embarked upon 'The Great Tribble Hunt,' rendering the species extinct. Unfortunately for them the special episode commemorating the franchise's 40th anniversary resulted in the crew going back in time and bringing a tribble back with them when they returned. Given their prodigious reproductive capabilities their numbers once again rapidly exapnded.

** ''Franchise/XMen'': The Savage Land plays with this, as it is a LostWorld in the arctic with LivingDinosaurs and other extinct animals, but as it was actually created ''during prehistory'' its wildlife cannot truly be said to have been extinct and revived. Instead, they were preserved from extinction and have carried on for millions of years as though the K-T meteor never hit.

[[quoteright:300:[[Literature/SamHanniganAndTheLastDodo https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/samhannigandodo.png]]]]

* In the ''Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian'' story "The Devil In Iron", Conan ventures into a mysterious city on an island that'd previously held only ruins. His suspicion that something has brought the long-dead settlement back to life is supported when he finds the intact pelt of a golden leopard in a bedchamber, and recognizes it as an animal that went extinct a thousand years ago. [[spoiler: He later fights a giant snake, also of a species known to be extinct.]]

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'': Certain species of Pokémon (known as "Fossil Pokémon") are known to have been extinct for tens of thousands of years. Then, in "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon", Ash and his friends finds a cave full of the thought-extinct Aerodactyl, Kabuto, and Omanyte.

** In the ''Crown Tundra'' expansion for ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'', all of the previous generations' fossil Pokémon can be found in the wild. Omanyte's PokéDex entry in ''Sword'' implies that this is a result of escapes from revival labs and trainers releasing them, and another NPC mentions that these "rocky" Pokémon are recent additions to the tundra.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'':

* ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf'': In the fifth film, the goats learn that snakes are assumed to be an extinct species. As they discover, however, a small handful of snakes actually ''are'' still out there, but are hiding from the outside world and [[AssInALionSkin pretending to be other animals]] when they do go outside.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'': The Sniffer is an 'extinct' mob which the player can revive by finding ancient eggs around the world and hatching them.

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'']]: The Sniffer is an 'extinct' mob which the player can revive by finding ancient eggs around the world and hatching them.

* ''[[VideoGame/Minecraft'']]: The Sniffer is an 'extinct' mob which the player can revive by finding ancient eggs around the world and hatching them.

* ''VideoGame/Minecraft'': The Sniffer is an 'extinct' mob which the player can revive by finding ancient eggs around the world and hatching them.

** And in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', we learn it isn't even the first time they survived an attempted xenocide. The Protheans tried using them as weapons of war, but when the Rachni proved too difficult to control, the Protheans burned over 200 worlds trying to wipe them.

** Breeders in South Africa are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga_Project similarly attempting]] to re-create the quagga, an extinct subspecies of plains zebra, by breeding zebras with fainter stripes than usual to recreate the quagga's distinctive horselike coat. Unfortunately it'll be much harder to replicate the Quagga's greater physical strength and docility relative to other zebras, meaning that [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_horse A similar project]] attempted to breed back the tarpan (A.K.A. European wild horse), from which many domestic horse breeds descend.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect'', the Rachni, a race of space-faring insects with a HiveMind intelligence, are believed to have been extinct since the end of the Rachni Wars 2,000 years earlier. Then Shepard and co. encounter them on the planet Noveria. Depending on the player's actions, Shepard can either let them survive or [[KillEmAll finish the job.]]

* ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' invokes the Coelacanth; see [[RealLife below]].

* Wiki/TheOtherWiki has a whole list of them, both plants and animals. They are officially known as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon Lazarus Taxa]] Species ''thought'' to have re-emerged after vanishing from the fossil record, but which [[SubvertedTrope turn out to be unrelated to the fossils they resemble]], are nicknamed "Elvis Taxa" in reference to [[ElvisLives the persistent claimed sightings of the King of Rock and Roll after his death]].

* Two mechanics in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MunowVfXOuY Volkswagen commercial]] discus this when they find a full-sized spare tire in the trunk of a Jetta. One of them even mentions the coelacanth.

* The takahē is a species of goose-sized flightless bird native to New Zealand which was originally known from fossils, before a living specimen was discovered (but not before being killed and eaten) a few years later (the native Maori had known about the birds for centuries of course). Then it was considered extinct again by the beginning of the 20th century, before being re-rediscovered alive again in a remote mountain valley fifty years later. Nowadays, a couple hundred of the birds still exist and their population continues to grow.

* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'' has Relicanth, based on the most famous real-life example, the coelacanth.
** Predating Relicanth are Aerodactyl and Kabuto/Omanyte, the two fossils that can be revived by the player in the Gen 1 games ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue''.