Perhaps the world's most notorious extinct animal, the dodo was driven to extinction a mere 80 years after its discovery. Since the bird's habitat on the island of Mauritius contained no natural predators, the dodo evolved to have no fear of humans and was easily clubbed to death.

 

The dodo may soon be reborn if scientists can locate enough DNA to create a clone that could be implanted in the eggs of closely related modern pigeons. For example, DNA samples have recently been retrieved from museum samples housed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, making the dodo a good candidate for this process.