Gone

Featuring striking artworks that resurrect these forgotten creatures, each chapter focuses on a different animal, revealing insights into their unique characteristics and habitats; the history of their discovery and just how and when they came to be lost to us. 
 
Blencowe inspects the only known remains of a Huia egg at Te Papa, New Zealand; views hundreds of specimens of deceased Galapagos tortoises and Xerces Blue butterflies in the California Academy of Sciences; and pays his respects to the only soft tissue remains of the Dodo in the world. Warm, wry and thought-provoking, Gone shows that while each extinction story is different, all can inform how we live in the future. Discover and learn from the stories of the:

• Great Auk. A majestic flightless seabird of the North Atlantic and the ‘original penguin’.
• Spectacled Cormorant. The ‘ludicrous bird’ from the remote islands of the Bering Sea. 
• Steller’s Sea Cow. An incredible ten tonne dugong with skin as furrowed as oak bark. 
• Upland Moa. The improbable birds and the one-time rulers of New Zealand. 
• Huia. The unique bird with two beaks and twelve precious tail feathers. 
• South Island Kōkako. The ‘orange-wattled crow’, New Zealand’s elusive Grey Ghost. 
• Xerces Blue. The gossamer-winged butterfly of the San Francisco sand dunes. 
• Pinta Island Tortoise. The slow-moving, long-lived giant of the Galápagos Islands. 
• Dodo. The superstar of extinction. 
• Schomburgk’s Deer. A mysterious deer from the wide floodplains of central Thailand.