15:14 14 November 2013
As our ancestors spread across the globe, they were followed by wave upon wave of extinction. Countless species have died out and now there are more than 16,000 under threat, most from loss of habitat. However, only a handful of extinctions can be blamed entirely on us. Here are seven of them. Graham Lawton
Read more: "Primeval planet: What if humans had never existed?"
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Bluebuck (Hippotragus leucophaeus; last confirmed sighting ~1800)
When European settlers arrived in southern Africa in the mid-17th century, they wasted little time shooting and killing everything in sight. Many species were nearly exterminated but only one – the blue antelope or bluebuck – was driven to extinction.
Confined to a small corner of Africa's southern tip, the blueish-grey antelope was rare even before settlers arrived. It was never formally described while still alive – the species is known to science only from a handful of pelts and skulls. Nonetheless, it is considered a separate species, unlike the quagga, which was thought to be similarly separate when it went extinct in the late 1800s but is now known to have been a subspecies of the common zebra. The bluebuck is thus the only large sub-Saharan mammal to go extinct in historical times.
(Image: Martin Harvey/Getty Images)