History Main / SpeciesLostAndFound

* There are still occasional reportf thylacines (A.K.A. Tasmanian tigers/wolves or marsupial wolves) being sighted in the wild in UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, many areas of which are ''far'' from being thoroughly explored or even mapped from ground level, so it's far from impossible. That said, no one has ever produced physical evidence of a thylacine existing on mainland Australia more recent than 3,000 years ago, despite huge bounties offered in the past, so don't get your hopes ''too'' high.

* There are still occasional reports of Tasmanian Tigers being sighted in the wild in UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, many areas of which are ''far'' from being thoroughly explored or even mapped from ground level so it's far from impossible. That said, no one has ever produced physical evidence of a Tasmanian Tiger existing on mainland Australia more recent than 3000 years ago, despite huge bounties offered in the past so don't get your hopes ''too'' high.

** 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. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_horse A similar project]] attempted to breed back the tarpan, an European wild horse from which the domestic kind descends.

* The baiji, also known as the Yangtze River dolphin, was thought to have gone extinct or at least functionally extinct in 2006 after years of industrialization and pollution of the river they lived in. In 2007, a man caught on tape what appeared to be a white animal swimming in the river and nine years later, several news sources announced a sighting of what has been speculated to be a baiji. Still, the likelihood is that the species is now functionally, if not completely extinct due to the very low probability a sustainable population of these large animals still exist in such a polluted and industrialized environment.

A species believed to have been dead reappears in modern-day society. Perhaps humans, often showing hubris, bring a species back to life with magic or science. Or perhaps it was preserved in a LostWorld, frozen in a glacier, sealed in a bubble dimension, etc.

SuperTrope to FossilRevival and LivingDinosaurs

* ''Film/TheJungleBook2016'': King Louie is changed from an extant orangutan in [[Disney/TheJungleBook the animated film]] to an extinct ''Gigantopithecus'', the largest known primate that ever existed.

* There are still occasional reports of Tasmanian Tigers being sighted in the wild in UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}, many areas of which are ''far'' from being thoroughly explored or even mapped from ground level so it's far from impossible.

* There have been numerous attempts to resurrect recently extinct species -- or, technically, to create new strains of animals functionally identical to extinct species -- through selective breeding of their close relatives.

* The baiji, also known as the Yangtze River dolphin, was thought to have gone extinct or at least functionally extinct in 2006 after years of industrialization and pollution of the river they lived in. In 2007, a man caught on tape what appeared to be a white animal swimming in the river and nine years later, several news sources announced a sighting of what has been speculated to be a baiji.

* ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'': A dinosaur is revived by Shen Gon Wo that can convert anything to a previous form. Guess what oil was?

** Predating Relicanth are Aerodactyl and Kabuto/Kabutops, the two fossils that can be revived by the player in the Gen 1 games ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue''.

* ''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 couple of tribbles back with them when they returned. Given their prodigious reproductive capabilities their numbers once again rapidly exapnded.

* ''Fanfic/TheBridge'' has numerous {{Kaiju}} that are prehistoric in origin [[note]]Godzilla, Anguirus, Baragon, Yonggary, Raiga, Rodan, etc.[[/note]] and uses an alternate timeline of the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' franchise. Expanded material shows that various LostWorlds exist and have been documented since the early 2000s with some found earlier but falling into obscurity. The author also [[ShownTheirWork took the effort]] to explain how dinosaurs and many other prehistoric animals could go unnoticed in the fossil record for so long by showing all non-avian dinosaurs and the pterosaurs did go extinct 65 million years ago, but in many cases the AdvancedAncientHumans from the Rebirth of Mothra and Gamera series recreated numerous prehistoric species thousands of years in the past with a mix of science and mysticism, either for scientific curiosity or as genetic templates to create living weaponized kaiju against the BigBad. So it's a case of FossilRevival, just one that happened thousands of years ago and some remnants survived.

* ''Fanfic/TheBridge'' has numerous {{Kaiju}} that are prehistoric in origin [[note]]Godzilla, Anguirus, Baragon, Yonggary, Raiga, Rodan, etc.[[/note]] and uses an alternate timeline of the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}} franchise. The AdvancedAncientHumans from the Rebirth of Mothra and Gamera series recreated numerous prehistoric species thousands of years in the past, either for scientific curiosity or as living weapons against the BigBad.

** German zookeepers in the 1920s made a concerted effort to re-create the aurochs, extinct ancestor of domesticated cattle, by selectively breeding contemporary cattle for aurochs-like traits. Unfortunately, while the resulting pseudo-aurochs (known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle Heck cattle]]) ''looked'' like the real thing, they lacked the necessary survival instincts to fend for themselves, preventing them from being reintroduced to the wild as intended. More recent attempts to re-engineer the aurochs -- like the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_cattle Taurus project]], the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tauros_Programme Tauros Programme]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruz_Project Uruz Project]] -- have come much closer to replicating the original animal's genotype, but reintroduction of the species is still pending.

See also NotSoExtinct (everyone knows a fantastic animal is extinct. Everyone is wrong.)

* German zookeepers in the 1920s made a concerted effort to re-create the aurochs, extinct ancestor of domesticated cattle, by selectively breeding contemporary cattle for aurochs-like traits. Unfortunately, while the resulting pseudo-aurochs (known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle Heck cattle]]) ''looked'' like the real thing, they lacked the necessary survival instincts to fend for themselves, preventing them from being reintroduced to the wild as intended. More recent attempts to re-engineer the aurochs have come much closer to replicating the original animal's genotype, but reintroduction of the species is still pending.
** Breeders in South Africa are similarly attempting to re-create the quagga, an extinct subspecies of plains zebra.

** ''Literature/TheMockeryBird'': The eponymous bird was worshiped as a god by the natives of the small tropical island Zenkali until it was hunted to extinction by the colonizers. The book's protagonists discover that a small population of these birds are still around in a valley which the colonizers intend to destroy to build a power plant for the island's airport.

* Wolves in ''Anime/WolfsRain''. Thought to have been extinct for 200 years, actually hanging on in disguise. Not for much longer, though -- just until the end of the world.

* ''Franchise/XMen'': Sheltered world preserved, despite the immediate outside world being much much cooler.

* ''Fanfic/TheBridge'' has numerous kaiju that are prehistoric in origin [[note]]Godzilla, Anguirus, Baragon, Yonggary, Raiga, Rodan, etc.[[/note]] and uses an alternate timeline of the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}} franchise. The AdvancedAncientHumans from the Rebirth of Mothra and Gamera series recreated numerous prehistoric species thousands of years in the past, either for scientific curiosity or as living weapons against the BigBad.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Syberia}}'', it turns out that [[spoiler: woolly mammoths are Not Dead Yet and living on the eponymous island of Syberia, up in the north.]]

* ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' invokes the Coelant; [[RealLife below]].
* ''[[VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Touhou 14: Double Dealing Character]]'' introduces Kagerou Imaizumi, the werewolf based on the extinct Honshu/Japanese wolf. Also crosses over with NotSoExtinct due to her werewolf nature.
* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'' has Relicanth, based on the most famous real-life example, the coelacanth.

SuperTrope to FossilRevival

See also NotSoExtinct (everyone knows a fantastic animal is extinct. Everyone is wrong.) and LivingDinosaurs

See also NotSoExtinct (everyone knows a fantastic animal is extinct. Everyone is wrong.)

* 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".