10 Exquisite Creatures That Once Roamed the Earth

Over 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are extinct. Some are celebrated, like the ferociously famous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. Others, like an ancient set of stacked cones called Cloudina, are more obscure. But as life has continued spinning off more “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful,” extinction has acted as the flipside to evolution as our planet’s biota continually reshapes itself.