Recently extinct mammals are defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as any mammals that have become extinct since the year 1500 CE. Since then, roughly 80 mammal species have become extinct.
Extinction of taxa is difficult to confirm, as a long gap without a sighting is not definitive, but before 1995 a threshold of 50 years without a sighting was used to declare extinction.
The Bramble Cay melomys, or Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat (Melomys rubicola), is a recently extinct species of rodent in the family Muridae and subfamily Murinae. It was an endemic species of the isolated Bramble Cay, a low-lying vegetated coral cay with a habitable area of approximately 5 acres (2.0 ha) located at the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Described by researchers as having last been seen in 2009 and declared extinct by the Queensland Government and University of Queensland researchers in 2016, it was formally declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in May 2015 and the Australian government in February 2019. Having been the only mammal endemic to the reef, its extinction was described as the first extinction of a mammal species due to anthropogenic climate change.