Biodiversity

Some of you will know that I'm putting together a giant textbook on the vertebrate fossil record… and, oh god, it isn't easy. If you want sneak-peeks on how things are going, please consider supporting me at my patreon page.

Here's the crazy thing about living in Hawaii: Even though the islands are home to more than 18,000 unique species that live nowhere else on Earth, the people of Hawaii rarely see those native plants and animals.

I think we can all agree that dogs are great at everything. Except being bad friends, they're terrible at that. They're especially great at having jobs, and increasingly, researchers are realising their potential as wildlife scouts to help them track down the struggling species that (understandably) are doing their best to stay hidden.

"Heterotrophic" microbes were identified 6.8 miles (11 km) below sea level in an undersea canyon that's the lowest point on Earth's surface

The world's rarest big cats have become ever-so-slightly less rare over the past decade. According to a census released this week, there are now at least 57 Amur leopards (Panthera pardus orientalis) in Russia.

It’s clear that we as a nation are failing to engage minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as well as we could.

As if rampant deforestation and poaching weren't bad enough, climate change will have a devastating effect on the majority of Madagascar's lemur species, most of them already imperiled, according to a paper published this week in Ecology and Evolution.

I'm a big fan of palaeognaths - the terrestrial bird group that includes the mostly big, flightless ratites and the chicken-sized, flight-capable tinamous.

For thousands of years a thin bridge of sand and rock connected mainland India with the island of Sri Lanka. The 30-kilometer stretch known as Rama's (or Adam's) Bridge disappeared centuries ago—probably after a cyclone in the year A.D.

To look at a rock sponge, which usually has all the visual appeal of a potato, you would never guess that inside lies the Notre Dame of animal skeletons.

One of the most recently discovered lemur species of Madagascar could also be one of the first to disappear. The striking blue-eyed black lemur (Eulemur flavifrons), which was only identified as a species in 2008, faces extinction in as little as 11 years due to rapid deforestation in its only habitat, according to research published [...]

The tropical plant Genlisea is a tiny, homely rosette of simple green leaves. If you dig up its roots, you will find what look like an unremarkable bunch long, pale underground roots.