"Extinction"

A Single Gene in One Species Can Cause Other Species to Go Extinct

This “keystone” variant of a gene could make or break a food web in an experimental system

New Augmented Reality Models Bring Ice Age Animals to Virtual Life

Researchers want their models to inspire more accurate reconstructions of extinct animals such as mammoths and saber-toothed cats

‘Frozen in Place’ Fossils Reveal Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Struck in Spring

Clues to the season of impact lingered in delicate fish fossils

Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct

Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse 

Life inside the Extinction

These are startling times, but there’s a way out

Self-Terminating Biospheres

Is life’s persistence on Earth really the norm?

If Apes Go Extinct, So Could Entire Forests

Bonobo poop matters. Well, maybe not the poop itself, but what's in it. You see, bonobos eat a lot of fruit, and fruit contains seeds. Those seeds travel through a bonobo's digestive system while the bonobo itself travels through the landscape...

Humans Cross Another Danger Line for the Planet

Five years go an impressive, international group of scientists unveiled nine biological and environmental "boundaries" that humankind should not cross in order to keep the earth a livable place...

Science and Art Exhibits To Launch 2015

The number of exhibits combining science and art in some capacity has grown steadily since I began blogging about them in 2011. With exhibits in galleries and museums across the country, there’s something for everyone...

Fresh Start for an Extinct Cat?

Credit: An 1862 painting of a Formosan clouded leopard by Joseph Wolf, image in the public domain Source: from Could Extinct Clouded Leopards Be Reintroduced in Taiwan?

#MapMonday: ‘Map of Life’ Shows Hemorrhaging of Species

For this #MapMonday we return to Yale's Environmental Performance group, featured previously here on #MapMonday. The newly released biodiversity map brings together a whopping amount of data to detail the state (quality not just quantity) of species around the world, and while the staggering diversity of life on our planet is breathtaking (and sometimes pretty [...]..

Bluefin Tuna, Chinese Cobra and Others Added to Red List of Threatened Species

The latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species was published Monday and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t good news. The Red List, the global inventory of species, now identifies 22,413 species as threatened with extinction around the world...

100 Years Ago Today

Today marks a sad centennial: the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), a species once so abundant that their flocks blacked out the skies of North America...

Passenger Pigeons Went Extinct 100 Years Ago

For nearly a minute the sky went black. Then it was over. I was standing in a long alley between two four-story brick buildings on a clear sunny day.

Poaching Could Drive Elephants Extinct in Decades

Two or more dead elephants in one place means one thing: poaching by professional killers. Another tip-off is the lack of a face, as poachers hack off the tusks to be sold for ivory.

This Week’s Coolest Science Stories

First-week-of-summer highlights include tech-savvy trees, gloppy oatmeal and vast swarms of now-extinct birds

3 Billion to Zero: What Happened to the Passenger Pigeon?

Human actions may have caused the species’s populations to grow huge as well as led to its demise

Fact or Fiction?: Mammoths Can Be Brought Back from Extinction

Is de-extinction a real possibility?

Continued Protection for the Regal Island Raptor

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember

“If you think Humans are destroying the planet in a way that’s historically unprecedented, you’re suffering from a species-level delusions of grandeur.” -Annalee Newitz, Scatter Adapt, and Remember Perhaps it’s having a 3 month old baby in the house (our second), but I’ve been thinking about the apocalypse more than normal...