The Doom of Giants

Many of the largest mammals alive today are also among the most vulnerable. For the past three centuries, wildlife populations of African elephants, blue whales, giant pandas, and all species of tigers, rhinos, and gorillas have been hobbled both by habitat loss and human hunting (both for sport and resources of dubious real value like ivory). 

This phenomenon isn't limited to human times. Bus-sized nautiloids, 20-foot armored fish, gorgonopsids, sauropods, and basilosaurid cetaceans were all the biggest animals of their world and all were obliterated forever in mass extinctions at the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Cretaceous, and Eocene, respectively.

While my output for endangered mammal drawings have slowed down of late, I did manage to draw two threatened giants in October that I've yet to post here:

Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus)
Current Range: Ujung Kulon National Park, westernmost Java, Indonesia
Conservation Status: Critically endangered (58-61 as of March 2015)

Northern right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)
Current Range: From the east coast of Florida to the North Sea
Conservation Status: Endangered

Incidentally, pick up A Dynasty of Dinosaurs! It's an amazing dinosaur coloring book for more mature artists by paleontologists Jason Poole and Jason Schein. Here's a set of pages I've been coloring in lately:

While I'm not of the identity of each sauropod here, I know that number 2 (if we follow their heads left to right) is Amargasaurus, and I'm pretty sure that numbers 1, 5, 7, and 9 are Nigersaurus, Saltasaurus, Plateosaurus, and Lessemsaurus, respectively. Numbers 4 and 8 are almost certainly super-sized titanosaurs (possibly Dreadnoughtus and/or Paralititan?), while 3 and 6 are likely diplodocoids (Rebbachisaurus and Suuwassea, perhaps?).

In any case, great job Jasons!