List of New Zealand species extinct in the Holocene
Wikimedia list article
This is a list of New Zealand species extinct in the Holocene that covers extinctions from the Holocene epoch, a geologic epoch that began about 11,650 years Before Present (about 9700 BCE) and continues to the present day. This epoch equates with the latter third of the Haweran Stage of the Wanganui epoch in the New Zealand geologic time scale.
The North Island and South Island are the two largest islands of New Zealand. Stewart Island is the largest of the smaller islands. New Zealand proper also includes outlying islands such as the Chatham Islands, Kermadec Islands, and New Zealand Subantarctic Islands. Only New Zealand proper is represented on this list, not the Realm of New Zealand. For extinctions in the Cook Islands, Niue, or Tokelau, see the List of Oceanian animals extinct in the Holocene.
The islands of East Polynesia (including New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island) were among the last habitable places on Earth colonised by humans. The first settlers of New Zealand migrated from Polynesia and became the Māori people. According to archeological and genetic research, the ancestors of the Māori arrived in New Zealand no earlier than about 1280 CE, with at least the main settlement period between about 1320 and 1350, consistent with evidence based on whakapapa (genealogical traditions).
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This entry incorporates text from “List of New Zealand species extinct in the Holocene” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.