On the case of Hisuian Growlithe, I’d think of it to be like how dogs were tamed and bred to be more amenable to people, thus removing the niche that the untamed variant fell into.

"In Pokemon, being extinct is a minor inconvenience." That's such a badass statement.

“Big fish pokemon”

Concerning Wyrdeer: The old English term "wyrd" refers to having the ability to control fate. As far as Pokémon naming goes, things like this are rarely coincidental.

Everyone who said Basculine was just a forgettable fish and would be better as food than on a team looking pretty shook rn

since we see basculin in unova and no basculin in dpp, we can do a little leap and assume that the reason basculegion is not a thing is simply because the geography of hisui changed making it not suitable, then basculin fixated themselves in the unova region in which the upstreams are not as violent so most basculin survive which results in no evolution

I think its important to note for Wyrdeer, Stantler are partially native in Sinnoh, but only through the Pokeradar.

I bet this is only the red variant. We’ll have a blue and red Basculegion to choose from

Not so much extinct as more that they no longer live in the region. Growlithe now live further south of the mountain range, Braviary now live in Unova and Alola which is nowhere near Sinnoh, Basculin now live in Unova and aren't dying as often so that specific evolution never materialized, and Stantler are endangered and Sinnoh has changed greatly. These pokemon didn't go extinct because their pre-evolutions and overall species are still around. These evolutions were just dropped for a variety of reasons similar to why the pokemon world didn't see Mamoswine, Yanmega, and Tangrowth for a very long time until ancient power was reintroduced.

“Extinct” in the sense that the

Imagine the requirement to evolve Basculin is to have 6 Basculins in your team and having 5 killed/defeated in battle. That’d be sick.

Ok for the basculegion thing. In modern days they’re found primarily in unova. And whatever made them evolve was back in sinnoh. So they just can’t evolve anymore. So that one is just migration.

HE DO BE THE GOODEST BOI THO

I mean with pokémon home there's gonna be some time travel shenanigans about these pokémon.

Native Basculin and Braviary could've easily died out, but it's likely the other regional variants just lost their adaptations due to becoming more domesticated.

I could see a DLC tie-in for the Shinnoh remakes that gives you statues for your hidden bases that will allow them to appear the in the underground.

"Somehow Basculegion returned"

Imagine if the one last Basculegion lurks somewhere deep in the ocean, so powerful from the compounding deaths of every Basculin that it's gigantic and unkillable?

And then when you bring it over in Home, it's probably saying something about messing with space and time, like the info summary you get when bringing over Go Pokemon over to Let's Go.

I think Basculegion is actually not extinct but extremely rare, because basculin have become physically stronger with every game pokedex entry it seems to me there is no real sinareo for it to evolve into Basculegion anymore