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The bucardo became extinct in 2000, but cells from the last animal were frozen in liquid nitrogen. In 2003, a cloned calf was brought to term but died a few minutes after birth. Now, the scientists will test the viability of the female bucardo's 14-year-old preserved cells. The bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex, calf born through cloning was an historic event: the first "de-extinction", in which a lost species or sub-species was resurrected.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) declared in October that the South Florida rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma seminola) is extinct, but the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Snake Conservation think otherwise, and have put up a $500 reward to the first person who can document that the snake is not extinct. Cameron Young, executive director of the Center for Snake Conservation said in a press release that declaring the snake extinct without adequate research is scientifically irresponsible. Young hopes that in offering a reward for valid documentation that the snake is not extinct, the proof will...

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature is officially declaring the western black rhino of Africa extinct. In its latest assessment of the situation, the IUCN says two other sub-species of rhinoceros also are close to extinction. Despite the action of conservation programs, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature warns many sub-species of rhinos may soon be a thing of the past. The deputy director of IUCN’s Global Species program, Jean-Christophe Vie, tells VOA poaching is the main threat to the survival of the rhinoceros. “People just shooting them to take their horn. So, that is it,"...

Halloween is nearly here, and the next big holiday is Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas. But in our house, Christmas season has already begun, and our family can't get enough of it. We have already begun watching our Christmas DVDs. And since my last viewing of It's A Wonderful Life, I now have a nominee for our next president: George Bailey. Sure, he is a fictional character, but as a country, we have done worse.

The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study. The discovery gives hope to the world's most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world's tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia. The study, which appears in the June 29th issue of the International Journal of Environmental Studies, is by WCS conservationists Anthony Simms, Zalmai Moheb, Salahudin, Hussain Ali, Inayat Ali and Timothy Wood....

Scientists scouring the mountains of Borneo spotted a toad species last seen in 1924 by European explorers and provided the world with the first photographs of the colorful, spindly legged creature, a researcher said Thursday. In recent years, the Washington-based Conservation International placed the Sambas stream toad, also known as the Bornean rainbow toad, on a world "Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs" and voiced fears it might be extinct. Researchers found three of the slender-limbed toads living on trees during a night search last month in a remote mountainous region of Malaysia's eastern Sarawak state in Borneo, said Indraneil...

A University of Exeter biologist has discovered a 'lost' species of bat breeding on the Isles of Scilly (UK). A pregnant female brown long-eared bat is the first of its species to be found on the islands for at least 40 years. It was discovered by Dr Fiona Mathews, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, a postgraduate student and a team from the Wiltshire Bat Group. The Scilly Isles Bat Group called in Dr Mathews and her team to help them find out more about bats on the islands. The researchers set up a radiotracking study, with funding from...

MANILA (AFP) – The bones of an extinct sea cow species that lived about 20 million years ago have been discovered in a cave in the Philippines by a team of Italian scientists, the expedition head said Monday. Several ribs and spine parts of the aquatic mammal were found in February and March in limestone rock above the waters of an underground river on the island of Palawan, said University of Florence geologist Leonardo Piccini. "The fossil is in the rock, in the cave. We cannot remove it and we don't want to extract it. We would like to wait...

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten sightings and also heard the characteristic "kent" calls of this species on two occasions. Scientists...

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic,...

Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said. A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well. Some of the more reclusive creatures managed to hide from sight for 80 years only to reappear within four years of being officially named extinct in the wild. The shy okapi – which resembles a cross between a zebra and a giraffe – was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1901. After increasingly rarer sightings, it vanished...

Fish Studies Answer Flood Question by Brian Thomas, M.S.* According to the Bible, the world before Noah’s Flood, including the oceans, must have been idyllic. That was destroyed by the year-long global deluge, during which the earth’s land mass broke into continents, massive amounts of sediment were deposited and then partially eroded, and new and perhaps deeper oceans became more salty from continental runoff. If this historical picture is accurate, then at least one area of confusion needs to be addressed: How did “saltwater fish” live through all that?...

'A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.'

Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team. These nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites, are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at Murray Springs, Ariz., Bull Creek, Okla., Gainey, Mich., and Topper, S.C., as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada. Nanodiamonds can be produced on Earth, but only through high-explosive detonations or...

It may look like a gremlin, but this tiny animal is actually a pygmy tarsier, recently rediscovered in the forests of Indonesia. The 2-ounce (57-gram) carnivorous primate had not been seen alive since the 1920s. That was until researchers on a summer expedition captured, tagged, and released three members of the species (including this individual, above).

Elephants thought extinct may have survived Pygmy elephant with radio collar. Credit: Cede Prudente The Borneo pygmy elephant may not be native to the island of Borneo after all. Instead, the population could be the last survivors of the Javan elephant race – accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago, suggests an article co-authored by World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The origins of the pygmy elephants, found only on the northeast tip of the island in part of the Heart of Borneo, have long been shrouded in mystery. Their looks and behavior differ from other Asian...

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Two plants that were thought to have been extinct since the late 1800s have been rediscovered in far northern Australia, according to an official report released on Saturday. The Queensland state government's State of the Environment report said the two species were found on Cape York, in tropical far north Queensland. "The Rhaphidospora cavernarum, which is a large herb that stands about one and a half meters high, has reappeared," state climate change minister Andrew McNamara told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. "It hasn't been seen in Queensland since 1873," he said. He said the second plant that...

Climate Change And Human Hunting Combine To Drive The Woolly Mammoth ExtinctWoolly mammoths were driven to extinction by climate change and human impacts. (Credit: Mauricio Anton) ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Does the human species have mammoth blood on its hands" Scientists have long debated the relative importance of hunting by our ancestors and change in global climate in consigning the mammoth to the history books. A new paper uses climate models and fossil distribution to establish that the woolly mammoth went extinct primarily because of loss of habitat due to changes in temperature, while human hunting acted as the...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Marie Smith Jones, who worked to preserve her heritage as the last full-blooded member of Alaska's Eyak Indians and the last fluent speaker of their native language, has died. She was 89. Jones died in her sleep Monday at her home in Anchorage. She was found by a friend, said daughter Bernice Galloway, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M. "To the best of our knowledge she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive," Galloway said Tuesday. "She was a woman who faced incredible adversity in her life and overcame it," Galloway said. "She was about as tenacious as...

Neanderthals bid for human status 13 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to. This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals,...