Extinct — but maybe not forever

A 2013 TED Talk explored the topic of De-Extinction – the science of bringing extinct species back to life.

Read on to see more species that have been shortlisted by research group Revive and Restore as possible candidates for such a process.

One of the species on the list is the Dodo, a flightless bird native to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean that went extinct in the mid-17th century. A Dodo is seen here in display at the "Extinction: Not the End of the World?" exhibition at The Natural History Museum in London, Feb. 5, 2013.

Wooly mammoth

Ancient relatives of modern elephants, Wooly mammoths disappeared about 10,000 years ago. An abundance of frozen mammoths have been discovered, making them a potential candidate for cloning.

In this photo, an international team of scientists perform an autopsy and DNA analysis on Lyuba, a wooly mammoth. Sucked to her death in a muddy river bed, the baby mammoth spent 40,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost where her body was so perfectly preserved traces of her mother's milk remained in her belly.

Xerces blue butterfly

These beautiful butterflies lived in the sand dunes of San Francisco until urban development drove them to extinction in the mid-20th century. They are the first known North American butterfly to become extinct due to human causes.

Aurochs

The ancestors of modern cattle, these enormous mammals once roamed Europe, Asia and North Africa. The last auroch died in Poland in the 1600s.

Ivory-billed woodpecker

The Ivory-billed woodpecker is the Elvis Presley of birds due to its continued sightings. Though the last confirmed record of this bird was in the 1940s, it is officially listed as "possibly extinct" due to persistent rumors of sightings in the North American woods.

This photograph of a nestling ivory-billed woodpecker was taken by Dr. James Tanner in the former Singer Tract in Louisiana, the location of the last confirmed Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 1944, March 6, 1938.

Monk seal

The once-abundant Caribbean monk seal was hunted to extinction after being discovered by Columbus in 1494. The last official sighting of the species was in 1952.

This photograph of a Hawaiian Monk seal, a relative of the Caribbean monk and also critically endangered, napping on a beach was taken near the Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, June 27, 2002.

Passenger pigeon

Once one of the most common birds in the world, the extinction of the passenger pigeon is thought to have been caused by habitat loss. The last wild specimen was killed in 1900.

Pyrenean ibex

Extinct animals have been resurrected by cloning before, albeit briefly. Scientists in Spain had cloned a Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), a subspecies of wild goat also known as the bucardo, which went extinct in 2000.

Pictured here are Asiatic ibex, relatives of the Pyrenean ibex, in Berlin's Zoo.