Dead as a paddlefish

 

Or dead as a dodo named Mao? The Chinese paddlefish is officially declared extinct by the IUCN. 

So that was that, then. 

But apparently the paddlefishes as a group have been around for 120 million years, and there is still an (ugly) American species, so even 5,000-year old Chinese civilization has existed for only an instant compared to these peculiar creatures!