Extinction

From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

100 Years After Her Death, Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon, Still Resonates

The famed bird now finds itself at the center of a flap over de-extinction

Changila, a male elephant who was later killed by poachers near Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.

Surprise! Science Shows That Elephant Poaching Is Unsustainable

For the first time, scientists have made a comprehensive tally of illegal killing rates across Africa

Why Everyone From Conservationists to Yao Ming to Andrew Cuomo Supports Banning Ivory Sales

Because of corruption and laundering, any system of legal ivory trade threatens the continued existence of elephants

Not so mysterious: This is not a realistic depiction of a T. rex dinner.

The Ten Biggest Dinosaur Mysteries We Have Yet to Solve

Which one was the first, the biggest, the fuzziest? These puzzles continue to perplex paleontologists

The ecology of the meat-eaters like Allosaurus fragilis were likely threatened by the decline of the plant-eating dinosaurs, making the "perfect storm" for a mass extinction

Why the Dinosaurs Could Have Had a Chance of Surviving the Asteroid Strike

A new study suggests it wasn't just the asteroid that killed the dinos, but that other factors weakened their ability to survive it

When the Last of the Great Auks Died, It Was by the Crush of a Fisherman's Boot

Birds once plentiful and abundant, are the subject of a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum

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Watch the Unnerving Gait of This 410 Million-Year-Old Arachnid

Working from well-preserved fossils, paleontologists reproduced the trigonotarbids' walk

Europe Has Its Own Bison Species That Came Back From the Brink of Extinction

Bison were just reintroduced into a stretch of Romania where they haven't been found for two centuries

Dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes, but only the small, feathered variety survived.

Ancient Birds Avoided Mass Extinction By Shrinking

The shrinkage process was well underway before an asteroid brought doom to the dinosaurs 66 million years ago

Artist Todd McGrain's sculptures of five extinct North American birds are now on display in Smithsonian gardens.

Bronze Sculptures of Five Extinct Birds Land in Smithsonian Gardens

Artist Todd McGrain memorializes species long-vanished, due to human impact on their habitats, in his "Lost Bird Project"

Colorful archaea grow in in ponds.

How a Single Act of Evolution Nearly Wiped Out All Life on Earth

A single gene transfer event may have caused the Great Dying

Humans Killed the Moa, Genetics Study Suggests

Yet another species humans have the distinct honor of eradicating

The Anguilla Bank skink, a Caribbean species discovered along with 23 others in 2012, is vulnerable to extinction.

How Many Species Can We Find Before They Disappear Forever?

Biologists are in a race to locate and identify new species as habitats become victim to an industrialized world

A pair of Ammonite fossils, about 4 inches across, within a limestone bed very close to the Permian-Triassic boundary.

How Long Does Mass Extinction Take?

By figuring out the timing and rate of the world's most massive extinction 252 million years ago, scientists hope to figure out how such lethal events work

Hey you guys, got any flowers? I'm starving.

Did Flowers Take Out The Woolly Mammoth?

Some researchers think that the mighty beasts may have been bested by tiny flowers. Or, more precisely, the lack of them

A dingo walks along a road in southern Australia.

Maybe Dingoes Don’t Deserve Their Bad Rap

Studies show that Australia's "favorite scapegoat" most likely didn't kill the Tasmanian tiger

We've Done So Well by Chesapeake Oysters, We Can Start Eating Them Again

Perhaps this time we can keep ourselves from eating them to oblivion

The London Zoo’s Brian Zimmerman looks for a cichlid in Madagascar.

Doomed Species May Be Saved—A Global Search Locates a Female

With this little fish facing down extinction, a global hunt turned up a few remaining wild individuals

Silhouette of the Tyrannosaurus called Stan. This "tyrant lizard king," was excavated and prepared by the Black Hills Institute.

The Top Ten Weirdest Dinosaur Extinction Ideas

Paleontologists, both professional and amateur, have dreamed up some bizarre explanations of how the dinosaurs disappeared from Earth

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What Is the Anthropocene and Are We in It?

Efforts to label the human epoch have ignited a scientific debate between geologists and environmentalists

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