List of extinct animals of the Philippines

The Philippines had a large and diverse group of mammalian species in the past. They are widely distributed across the archipelago, but they became extinct due to several factors. At least eight mammalian species have been extinct since the Pleistocene Epoch. A fossil species of the Sirenia has been found on Palawan and went extinct during the Miocene. Other unknown species of extinct deer, buffalo, pig, and small mammals are only known from incomplete fossil remains known from the Pleistocene. The Asian elephant was introduced to the Philippines, originally transported to the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, but became extinct on those areas or were transported back to Sabah for unknown reasons sometime during the 13th to 16th(?) centuries. One former species of bat known as Acerodon lucifer was thought to be extinct, but is now synonymous with the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Thus, the species still thrives in the archipelago, but is locally extinct on the island of Panay.

Paleontological and archeological findings yielded information regarding the extinct mammalian species found in the Philippines through the excavation of various sites in the country.

Image	Common name/scientific name	Period	Description
	Elephas sp.	Pleistocene	Found on Iloilo, Panay Island
	Asian elephant Elephas maximus	Holocene	Introduced in the 13th-16th? century from Sabah in the reign of the Sultanate of Sulu, and became extinct on Maguindanao, or were transported back to Sabah. Bone fragments are the only proof left behind of their existence.
	Stegodon luzonensis	Pleistocene	Once roamed in the plains of Luzon, Mindanao and entire Philippine Archipelago. Unfavorable geographical conditions and human exploitation caused their extinction.[1]
	Palawan fossil Sirenia Dugong sp.?	Miocene	Discovered in Palawan in 2011. The fossil has not yet been extracted from the rocks in fear of destroying the natural heritage caves of Palawan. Future technology in fossil extraction is the only way to get and identify the fossil.[2]
	Fossil murines	Pleistocene	Excavations in Callao Cave, in the lowland (around 85 m elevation) Cagayan River Valley of northeastern Luzon, Philippines, have produced the first fossils of any endemic genera of Philippine murinae rodents. Three dentaries dated to the Late Pleistocene, between about 50,000 and 68,000 BP, are referred to the genera Batomys and Apomys.[3]
	Tiger Panthera tigris subsp.	Holocene	Two articulated phalanges and another phalanx piece were found amidst an assemblage of other animal bones and stone tools in Ille Cave near the village of New Ibajay. From the stone tools, besides the evidence for cuts on the bones, and the use of fire, it would appear that early humans had accumulated the bones.[4] Additionally, the condition of the tiger subfossils, dated to approximately 12,000 to 9,000 years ago, differed from other fossils in the assemblage, dated to the Upper Paleolithic. The tiger subfossils showed longitudinal fracture of the cortical bone due to weathering, which suggests that they had post-mortem been exposed to light and air. Tiger parts were commonly used as amulets in South and Southeast Asia, so it may be that the tiger parts were imported from elsewhere, as is the case with tiger canine teeth, which were found in Ambangan sites dating to the 10th to 12th centuries in Butuan, Mindanao. On the other hand, the proximity of Borneo and Palawan also makes it likely that the tiger had colonized Palawan from Borneo before the Early Holocene.[5][6]
	Philippine rhinoceros Rhinoceros philippinensis	Pleistocene	Due to the lack of a complete skeleton, little is known about Rhinoceros philippinensis, other than that it lived during the Pleistocene era (2.588 million – 11,700 years ago) and that it was essentially the larger version of its modern relative, the Sumatran rhino. A fossilized upper jaw, it is a portion of right upper jaw with two well-preserved molars and a broken one of a rhinoceros.[1][7]
	Cebu warty pig Sus cebifrons cebifrons	Holocene	The Cebu warty pig previously lived on the island of Cebu before becoming extinct in modern times, primarily due to habitat destruction and human exploitation. The subspecies was declared extinct in 2000, but other warty pig subspecies still survive on other Philippine islands.
	Palawan cervus Cervus sp.	Pleistocene	Unknown extinct species of deer found on the Palawan mainland
	Cebu tamaraw Bubalus cebuensis	Pleistocene or Holocene	The Cebu tamaraw stood only 75 cm (2 ft 6 in) and weighed about 150 to 160 kg (330 to 350 lb).[1][8] The species was smaller than the modern Mindoro tamaraw.
	Luzon giant tortoise Megalochelys sondaari	Pleistocene	Lived on the island of Luzon.[9]
	Celebochoerus cagayanensis	Pleistocene	Lived in the Cagayan Valley on Luzon[10]
	Luzon buffalo Bubalus sondaari	Pleistocene	Lived on Luzon[11]
	Dhole Cuon alpinus	Holocene	Lived on Palawan during the Pleistocene and Early Holocene[12]

See also

• List of mammals of the Philippines
• List of Asian animals extinct in the Holocene

References

1. Mark, V. (August 4, 2014). "7 Prehistoric Animals You Didn't Know Once Roamed The Philippines". Filipi Know.
2. Tann (October 3, 2011). "20-million-year-old fossil sea cow discovered in Palawan". Archaeology News Network.
3. Heaney, Lawrence R.; Piper, Philip J.; Mijares, Armand S. B. (2011). "The first fossil record of endemic murid rodents from the Philippines: A late Pleistocene cave fauna from northern Luzon". Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 124 (3): 234–247. doi:10.2988/10-32.1.
4. Piper, P. J.; Ochoa, J.; Lewis, H.; Paz, V.; Ronquillo, W. P. (2008). "The first evidence for the past presence of the tiger Panthera tigris (L.) on the island of Palawan, Philippines: extinction in an island population". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 264 (1–2): 123–127. Bibcode:2008PPP...264..123P. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2008.04.003.
5. Van der Geer, A.; Lyras, G.; De Vos, J.; Dermitzakis, M. (2011). "15 (The Philippines); 26 (Carnivores)". Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 220–347. ISBN 9781444391282.
6. Ochoa, J.; Piper, P. J. (2017). "Tiger". In Monks, G. (ed.). Climate Change and Human Responses: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Springer. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-9-4024-1106-5.
7. "Rhinoceros philippinensis". National Museum of the Philippines.
8. "Fossil of New Species of Dwarf Buffalo from Philippines". American Museum of Natural History. 2006.
9. Turtle Extinctions Working Group (2015). "Turtles and Tortoises of the World During the Rise and Global Spread of Humanity: First Checklist and Review of Extinct Pleistocene and Holocene Chelonians" (PDF). Chelonian Research Monographs. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 18, 2017.
10. Ingicco, Thomas; van den Bergh, Gert; de Vos, John; et al. (2016). "A new species of Celebochoerus (Suidae, Mammalia) from the Philippines and the paleobiogeography of the genus Celebochoerus Hooijer, 1948" (PDF). Geobios. 49 (4): 285–291. doi:10.1016/j.geobios.2016.05.006. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017.
11. Pawlik, Alfred; Piper, Philip; Mijares, Armand Salvador (2014). "Chapter 11: Modern Humans in the Philippines: Colonization, Subsistence and New Insights into Behavioural Complexity". In Dennell, Robin; Porr, Martin (eds.). Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 135–147.
12. Piper, Philip J. (2017). "The Origins and Arrival of the Earliest Domestic Animals in Mainland and Island Southeast Asia: A Developing Story of Complexity" (PDF). In Piper, Philip J.; Matsumura, Hirofumi; Bulbeck, David (eds.). New Perspectives in Southeast Asian and Pacific Prehistory. Terra Australis 45. Acton, Australia: ANU Press. pp. 251–274.