EXTANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does extant mean? 

• EXTANT (adjective)
  The adjective EXTANT has 1 sense:

1. still in existence; not extinct or destroyed or lost

  Familiarity information: EXTANT used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EXTANT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Still in existence; not extinct or destroyed or lost

Context example:

specimens of graphic art found among extant barbaric folk

Similar:

living (still in active use)

living; surviving (still in existence)

Also:

existent; existing (having existence or being or actuality)

Antonym:

extinct (no longer in existence; lost or especially having died out leaving no living representatives)

 Context examples 

They proved similar to the hatching lines in today's reptiles, and to neonatal growth lines in extant mammals.

(Newly discovered baby Titanosaur sheds light on dinosaurs' early lives, NSF)

Phylogenetic analysis is the study of evolutionary relationships among the many different kinds of life on earth, both living (extant) and dead (extinct).

(Phylogenetic Analysis, NCI Thesaurus)

I suppose, now, said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, we shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in order to avert such a visitation, I again move the introduction of a new topic.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)