Hi Historians! I'm in my first year of studying History in University and it's a question one of my teachers brought up today but left sort of unanswered and I've been curious about the answer since. Would the societies of ancient History such as Romans or Egyptians have known of the existence of extinct species? When were they first known of? Are there sources or information that suggest they did know about them?
Not quite exactly what you were looking for, but we had a brief discussion on a related post by /u/PirateLife just yesterday:
In view of your question, there was no consensus on what exactly fossils were prior to at least Steno's work. But that is not quite the same thing as awareness of species going extinct.