This list of extinct animals of the Netherlands includes the animal species and subspecies once lived in the Netherlands but have disappeared since human habitation. This list features the mammals, birds, fish, molluscs, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, pond damselflies, mayflies, grasshoppers and crickets that have disappeared from the Netherlands. There have been no known extinctions of reptiles or amphibians in the Netherlands.
Most animals on this list of extinct animals in the Netherlands survive in other places in the world. However, some of them are now globally extinct, like the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), the European Wild Horse (Equus ferus) and the Aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius). One skeleton of the Great Auk was excavated in a Roman settlement near Velsen. Bones were also found near Rotterdam. In the Netherlands there are no bone finds of the aurochs after the Roman period (400 AD). Maculinea alcon arenaria, an endemic Dutch subspecies of the Alcon Blue butterfly became extinct at the end of the 1970s.
Fossilized remains of the Gray Whale (Eschrichtuis robustus), have been found dated to 340 BC, demonstrating that this species once roamed the North Sea, although it is no longer found there. A lower jaw of a lynx (Lynx lynx lynx) was found at the remains of a Roman settlement near Valkenburg in the Netherlands. During excavations of sites dated to the Roman period (around 400 AD) on the Rhine delta there were findings of important breeding sites of the Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus crispus). According to the hunting rights of the bishops of Utrecht we know that brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos) were still found in the Netherlands as late as the eleventh century. According to a hunting licence from Drenthe, elk (Alces alces alces) were also known to be in this country until 1025. The North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), which once appeared from the Bay of Biscay to Norway, have disappeared from the waters around the Netherlands. It is suspected that the last whales were caught at the end of the Middle Ages.
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