Call me a picky internetz forum pedant (you'd be right), but the OP at no point stipulated your extinct animal had to be a real extinct animal. Aaaaand, if I recall correctly, there's a passage in Return of The King in which the fell beasts that the Nazgûl ride are described which broadly implies they're dinosaurs. Middle Earth dinosaurs, but dinosaurs nonetheless.Canid117 said:Remind me what era those existed because I cant seem to recall it being real.
Thanks, Wikipedia.J.R.R Tolkien said:"... it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was ...."
Apparently ole J.R.R also stated that "[it was] obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much [to the] new ... mythology of the 'Prehistoric'...a last survivor of older geological eras."