The Presence Of Absence: How Do We Know A Species Is Really Extinct?

When the only image available of your species is a painting, that’s a really big clue that the species is extinct

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A pair of Purple-winged Ground-doves (Paraclaravis geoffroyi). Female, left; male, right. (Copyright and credit to the artist, Evaristo Hernández-Fernández)

They were nomadic. Shy. They slipped quietly through the skies over seemingly endless tropical forests, their lives devoted to travelling from one patch of…