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A new scientific study warns that increasingly severe and prolonged droughts, intensified by climate change, pose extinction risks to certain cactus species long thought to be drought-resistant. Researchers found that even these hardy desert plants have physiological limits that extreme dry conditions can exceed, leading to population collapse.
Researchers studying ant genomes report that the group's rapid diversification into roughly 15,000 known species accelerated around 66 million years ago, coinciding with the mass extinction event caused by an asteroid impact. The scientists attribute part of this genetic diversification to bursts of transposable elements, sometimes called 'jumping genes,' which resemble retroviruses in behavior.
Scientists are experimenting with underwater speakers that broadcast recordings of healthy reef sounds to attract fish and marine larvae back to degraded coral reefs. The approach, drawing on acoustic ecology research, aims to help speed natural recovery processes in damaged reef ecosystems.
Filmmaker Peter Jackson assisted in acquiring an ancient moa egg, one of fewer than 40 known to survive, after a Colorado gallery put it up for auction this June. The egg has now been repatriated to New Zealand with involvement from a de-extinction startup.
Researchers have described a newly identified fungal species that is now the largest known member of the Ascomycota phylum. The fossil specimen, nicknamed 'D. Rex,' dates to the period around the Chicxulub asteroid impact that triggered the mass extinction of dinosaurs.
Colossal Biosciences says it has built a new AI tool that narrows down which genetic changes would be needed to recreate traits of the extinct Dodo bird. The company, founded in 2021 to pursue de-extinction projects, lists the Dodo among its target species alongside the woolly mammoth and other vanished animals. The Dodo, once native to Mauritius, was wiped out within decades of European contact in the 16th century.
Colossal Biosciences unveiled GenoMorph, an AI platform combining 3D morphology, comparative genomics and developmental biology to identify key genes in species with scarce genetic data. The company is applying it to its dodo bird de-extinction effort, where only one dodo genome exists compared to roughly 100 genomes available for its woolly mammoth project. CEO Ben Lamm said the tool was built using developmental data from chickens, quail, ducks and pigeons alongside genetic and skull data from over 70 bird species.
Paleoartist Mark Witton is developing a speculative biology book, 'Dinosaurs Evolved,' imagining how life might look today had the K-Pg extinction never occurred. In response, an SV-POW! blog post surveys past speculative sauropod designs, including Memo Kösemen's Brontosapiens and Dougal Dixon's creatures from 'The New Dinosaurs' (1988), such as the trunked Lumber and armored Turtosaur.
Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm discussed the company's efforts to revive extinct species, including dire wolves, woolly mammoths, dodos, Tasmanian tigers, and moa, at the CNBC AI Forum. Lamm described using AI models to reconstruct the dire wolf genome from ancient DNA from a skull and tooth, then editing gray wolf cells to create embryos carried by surrogate dogs, resulting in three pups named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. He said the company expects to reveal more de-extinct species within the next one to two years.
An analysis of 13 bird species and subspecies with documented last-sighting and extinction-declaration dates finds a median gap of 36 years, and a mean of 47.5 years, between the two. The shortest gap was three years, for the dusky seaside sparrow; the longest was 124 years, for the Kauaʻi nukupuʻu, not delisted by the US government until October 2023. Four additional birds with last records between 1935 and 1963 have never been formally declared extinct.
Analysis of 2016 rock core samples from the Chicxulub impact crater shows that the asteroid strike 66 million years ago created a hydrothermal system beneath the Yucatan Peninsula that persisted for about 8 million years, four times longer than previous estimates of 2 million years. Researchers led by geologist Annemarie Pickersgill of the University of Glasgow found the impact melted rock as deep as 35 km, which became porous and allowed heated seawater to circulate for millions of years.
Colossal Biosciences has revealed the genetic engineering process it used to create living wolf pups carrying about 20 edited DNA segments associated with extinct dire wolves. The company says the underlying technology, rather than the pups themselves, represents the more significant advance, since it can be applied broadly to reconstruct extinct genetic traits in living animals.