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Rewilding is not about restoring the past, but about proactively seeking solutions for a world in environmental crisis. There is something deeply heartening about an extinct native species being reintroduced to its former habitat. In the United Kingdom, there are several of those stories. The last time storks were recorded breeding in the UK was way back in 1416 on top of a cathedral in Edinburgh. This year, nests on the Knepp Estate in West Sussex produced the first wild-born chicks in 600 years. The parent birds were bred in captivity and released into the wild as part of a...

A new study by Russian and French researchers found new petroglyphs which helped the answer this conundrum. For example, at Baga-Oygur II was found the image of a long-gone woolly rhino. Most of the image is lost due to a rock slicing, but the animal is quite recognisable with an elongated, squat torso, short powerful legs, a characteristic tail, and an elongated muzzle with exaggeratedly enlarged two horns. This was useful because these animals - like mammoths - became extinct around 15,000 years ago in this region, making the drawings the work of Palaeolithic artists... The scientists also concluded that...

When some people hear “mammoth,” money comes to mind. Local tour companies offer trips to the mammoth graveyards across the region’s Arctic frontier. Prospectors for mammoth parts—especially the tusks, known as ice ivory—have raced to collect remains. Around 100 tons of mammoth tusks are legally mined in Yakutia each year, while illegal mining is estimated at twice that much, according to a report by TASS “If ever a mammoth surfaces somewhere in the world, it will actually have Yakut roots,” said Mr. Fyodorov, proudly underscoring that his republic is mammoth central, the hereditary home of so many of these beasts....

In the 1990s, the remains of six Neanderthals -- two adults, two adolescents and two children -- were found in a small cave at Baume Moula-Guercy in the Rhône valley in southern France. The bones bear many of the hallmarks of cannibalism: cut marks made by stone tools, complete dismemberment of the individuals, and finger bones that look as if they've been gnawed by Neanderthal teeth, rather than by other carnivores. Remains from other sites in Croatia, Spain and Belgium also show evidence of cannibalism. But in each case, there has been a lack of evidence to answer the question...

Japanese scientists have awakened the cells of an extinct woolly mammoth in an experiment that could one day bring the prehistoric beasts back to life. Researchers from Kindai University in Osaka extracted bone marrow and muscle tissue from a long-frozen beast and injected it into the ovaries of a mouse, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports. The experiment revived the 28,000-year-old creature’s cells, triggering “signs of biological activity,” according to the researchers. “[It’s] a significant step towards bringing mammoths back from the dead,” Kei Miyamoto, one of the study’s authors, told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Cells from a woolly mammoth that died 28,000 years ago have begun to show "signs of biological [activity]" after they were implanted in mouse cells. However, researchers caution that it's unlikely the extinct creatures will walk the Earth again anytime soon. The research, published in Scientific Reports, details how a well-preserved woolly mammoth, found in 2011 in the Siberian permafrost, has begun to show some activity. "Until now many studies have focused on analyzing fossil DNA and not whether they still function," Miyamoto added. The study's abstract reveals "[i]n the reconstructed oocytes, the mammoth nuclei showed the spindle assembly, histone...

For several million years, the Earth cycled through ice ages at a regular pace, but then, 1.25 million to 700,000 years ago, something changed: ice ages went from lasting 40,000 years to 100,000. … By looking at the microscopic shells of microorganisms called foraminifera, Adam Hasenfratz of the Geological Institute in Zürich, Switzerland, and colleagues, find evidence of a reduction in deep water circulation, causing less carbon dioxide to be released into the air. Oceanic changes in the Antarctic Zone could have ensured “that glacial conditions persisted despite orbital changes to the contrary”, the study says. The new research, presented...

The Bering land bridge was exposed at various times over an almost three million year period, when wide scale glaciation lowered sea levels by as much as 150 metres. The land bridge was part of "Beringia," which refers to the stretch of land between present day Siberia and Yukon Territory. It's been home to woolly mammoths, steppe bison and humans. Jeff Bond, a geologist with Yukon Geological Survey in Whitehorse, has produced a map showing what Beringia looked like 18,000 years ago. At that time, much of the earth was glaciated, but Beringia remained predominantly ice-free due to its arid...

...and it was worn by a man! The suspicion is that the tiara - or diadem - was made by Denisovans who are already known to have had the technology 50,000 or so years ago to make elegant needles out of ivory and a sophisticated and beautiful stone bracelet. The tiara maybe the oldest of its type in the world. It appears to have had a practical use: to keep hair out of the eyes; it's size indicates it was for male, not female, use. Another theory, although related to tiaras made 20,000 years later by people living around river...

In the ice age, the inhabitants of today`s Europe were hunting mammoths with javelins. The first direct evidence of this is a fragment of a 25,000 years old flint head discovered in Kraków, stuck in a mammoth rib... archaeologists have discovered the remains of at least 110 mammoths from approx. 25,000 years ago. "Among tens of thousands of bones, during a detailed analysis of the remains, I came across a damaged mammoth rib. It turned out that a fragment of a flint arrowhead was stuck in it. This is the first such find from the Ice Age in Europe!" -...

Scientists based at Edinburgh Zoo are cooperating to create a genetics laboratory in Cambodia to fight the illegal ivory trade. While trying to save elephants, they have found ivory from another animal that is now extinct. In the WildGenes laboratory of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Dr Alex Ball is drilling what sounds like a giant tooth. Which is in effect what it is: an ornately carved elephant tusk... Together they are building Cambodia's scientific capacity to preserve its wildlife and combat the ivory trade which passes through it.

The last breaths of mammoths and mastodons some 13,000 years ago have garnered plenty of research and just as much debate. What killed these large beasts in a relative instant of geologic time? A question asked less often: What happened when they disappeared? A new study, based partly on dung fungus, provides some answers to both questions. The upshot: The landscape changed dramatically. "As soon as herbivores drop off the landscape, we see different plant communities," said lead researcher Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, adding the result was an "ecosystem upheaval." Gill and her colleagues found that...

Kirk Lacewell has lived in Langley, Wa. for approximately six years, part of that time with his dog, Scout. But when Scout began to dig into the backyard, it wasn't just any old rock he was uncovering — it was a woolly mammoth tooth. "I saw him with what looked like a rock to me one day a couple months ago and I didn’t think anything of it," Lacewell told Fox News. "And then the next day he had that rock again. He was just carrying it around the yard." Initially, Lacewell thought it was just a rock, but it seemed...

Full title: JURASSIC LARK Woolly Mammoths will roam new Jurassic Park-style theme park with cave lions and extinct horses in TEN YEARS, Russian scientists sayThe beasts are set to make a comeback to the plains of Siberia some 14,000 years after going extinct. LONG extinct cave lions may be about to rise from their icy graves and prowl once more alongside woolly mammoths and ancient horses in a real life Jurassic Park. In less than 10 years it is hoped the fearsome big cats will be released from an underground lab as part of a remarkable plan to populate a...

The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming that the first inhabitants arrived earlier to North America than previously thought, says a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University archaeologist. Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Colorado, Washington and Denmark believe the find at the Manis site in Washington demonstrates that humans were...

Archaeologists in Austria have uncovered a gruesome ‘kill site’ where Stone Age people slaughtered mammoths. The site, which was found during construction of a new bypass in Drasenhofen on the Czech border, contains mammoth tusks and bones. The remains have been dated to between 18,000 and 28,000 years ago. “This Paleolithic 'kill site' is the first one in Austria that has been excavated and analyzed according to the latest methods,” said Martin Krenn of Austria’s Federal Monuments Office, in a statement. “It gives us a sensational view of the way of life of the Palaeolithic people.”  An early Bronze Age settlement...

Scientists are analyzing the perfectly preserved remains of a prehistoric horse in a bid to clone the now-extinct animal. Recently discovered in permafrost in the Siberian region of Yakutia, the skin, hair, hooves and tail of the carcass are all preserved. The remains are estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old. Experts believe that the foal was about 2 months old when it died. Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in the regional capital of Yakutsk, was surprised to see the perfect state of the find. He noted it's the best-preserved ancient foal found to date. The Siberian...

The frozen carcass of the dark-brown baby horse is from an extinct species is up to 40,000 years old, and the animal was perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost in the Batagai crater in Yakutia, the coldest region in Russia. Leading researcher of the laboratory of Mammoth Museum Dr Semyon Grigoriev said: 'Fortunately, the animal's muscle tissues were undamaged and well preserved, so we managed to get samples of this unique find for biotechnology research.' South Korean cloning expert Professor Hwang Woo Suk, currently in Yakutsk, told The Siberian Times that a joint bid is underway to find a living...

Extinct woolly mammoths, cave lions and other long-gone species may be brought back to lifee in a new £4.5million cloning facility in Russia, scientists claim. The new Jurassic Park-style centre will be a "world class paleo-genetic scientific hub" in the world's coldest city, Yakutsk, in the remote north-east of the country. Vladimir Putin's exact plans will be unveiled in September at an investment forum but experts say the centre will aim "to study extinct animals from living cells - and to restore such creatures as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave lion and breeds of long-gone horses". The cloning laboratories...

mammoth some 12,900 years ago. A team of two dozen scientists say the culprit was likely a comet that exploded in the atmosphere above North America. The explosions sent a heat and shock wave across the continent, pelted the ground with a layer of telltale debris, ignited massive wildfires and triggered a major cooling of the climate, said nuclear analytic chemist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, one of the scientists who presented the controversial new theory Thursday at a conference of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco. At least 15 species, mostly large mammals including mammoths, mastadons, giant ground...