Endling
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An endling is the last known individual of a species or subspecies. Once the endling dies, the species becomes extinct. The word was coined in correspondence in the scientific journal Nature.
The last known thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), photographed at Hobart Zoo in 1933.
Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
A dusky seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus nigrescens), officially declared extinct in 1990.
A quagga mare at the London Zoo in 1870. This is the only specimen photographed alive.
Extinction
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Extinction is the termination of a taxon by the death of its last member. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" after a period of apparent absence.
The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an example of an extinct species.
External mold of the extinct Lepidodendron from the Upper Carboniferous of Ohio
The dodo of Mauritius, shown here in a 1626 illustration by Roelant Savery, is an often-cited example of modern extinction.