The amazing story of the coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938. [more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter on Sep 7, 2009 - 49 comments

Endangered Species Act Protections Restored by President Obama. Previous regulation made it easier to start projects without consulting scientists.
posted by Smaaz on Mar 4, 2009 - 17 comments

What Invasive Species Are Trying to Tell Us. "Walking snakeheads, carnivorous snails, and the superpredator from the reef: The invasion has begun." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Feb 16, 2009 - 46 comments

Cross another item off of President Bush's to-do list before he leaves the White House: hobbling the Endangered Species Act and allowing federal agencies to gauge the environmental impact of their projects for themselves. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the changes were needed to ensure that the ESA would not be used as a "back door" to regulate greenhouse gases.
posted by digaman on Aug 11, 2008 - 50 comments

The Genius of Charles Darwin [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 8, 2008 - 66 comments

What Is A Species? "To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
posted by homunculus on Jun 8, 2008 - 11 comments

The annual northward migration is in full swing. The first time you see one on your feeder for the new season is cause for a big smile (maybe a little waving of arms). These little guys can weigh as little as a penny, yet will consume nearly twice their body weight every day. Have you guessed? Yes, it's a hummingbird flight of fancy. (Attenborough video) [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 4, 2008 - 26 comments

Rethink. The. Shark. [YouTube] The Save Our Seas Foundation [small Flash], a Swiss-based non-profit, joins the growing ranks of a world-wide movement to undo the damage caused by popular reports and gross misrepresentation by Hollywood of sharks as human-savoring sea monsters/killing machines. The fact of the matter is that the opposite is true: Current estimates give between 65 million to 165 million sharks being killed worldwide annually via unregulated catch - including 38 million to 70 million [PDF] for their fin alone, with untold numbers of butchered and bleeding-to-death sharks being cast back into the oceans to die slow and gruesome deaths. [more inside]
posted by humannaire on Jul 31, 2007 - 38 comments

Four endangered gorillas were found shot dead in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a conservation group announced today. For all the evil bastards that do this, there are many, many more good people fighting the good fight to help keep gorillas healthy. One, even has a blog.
posted by james_cpi on Jul 26, 2007 - 41 comments

Dude, there are some fucked up creatures crawling around on the ocean floor.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 5, 2006 - 66 comments

Amphibian Extinction Crisis: "For the first time in modern history, because of the way that humans are impacting our natural world, we're facing the extinction of an entire class of organisms....This is not the extinction of just a panda or a rhino, it's a whole class of organisms." Original declaration of the Amphibian Conservation Summit (pdf). More details in the BBC and San Francisco Chronicle. Previously.
posted by salvia on Jul 7, 2006 - 9 comments

What animals are endangered? (2006, updated from 2004) One in four mammals. One in three amphibians. Raw data and photos behind what others call the mass extinction crisis. Polar bears expected extinct in 25 years. In a little good news, Great Apes may be granted human rights in Spain (like the mountain gorilla -- all 660 that remain). In other news, without salmon, widespread bankruptcy expected in California's fishing industry. Me? I can only afford an electric sheep.
posted by salvia on May 3, 2006 - 41 comments

This monkey business has finally gone too far [warning: cackling].
posted by thedevildancedlightly on Apr 13, 2005 - 17 comments

A new species of monkey turned up in India [NYTimes or Rediff]. Though the monkeys are new to science, people in the area are quite familiar with them. They call them "mun zala" or deep forest monkeys. It's a stocky, short-tailed, brown-haired creature they have named the Macaca munzala, or Arunachal macaque. Maybe not that excting for those of us not excited by, uh, mokeys, but did you know this year there have been other new things discovered? A new species of plec and one of Neon goby, even more exciting, a new electric fish was found as well. A quick search turned up dozens of new fish this year. ABC News says 178 new things found in the oceans this year alone, raising the number of life-forms found in the world's oceans to about 230,000. The big question is, of course, how many of those will Taste Like Chicken? The bad news on the little critter front is 1 in 10 bird species could vanish within 100 years, and I bet they all taste like chicken.
posted by Blake on Dec 16, 2004 - 16 comments

Extinct animals action figures - get yours and make them fight. Recreate the famous battles of Dodo vs. Caribbean Monk Seal, or Little Swan Island Hutia vs. the Balinese Tiger.
posted by milovoo on Oct 1, 2004 - 6 comments

Farewell, eels.
posted by troutfishing on Aug 2, 2004 - 36 comments

The Endangered Species Act marked its 30th anniversary this December. Some say we need it while others say we need to change it. Whatever its faults, many species have benefited from it.
posted by homunculus on Dec 30, 2003 - 5 comments

Hinterland Who's Who Back in the mid 1906s the Canadian government made what have now become the longest running public service annoucments ever. They're also possible the most boring, but that can't stop them from being amazingly popular. Don't forget to check out the spoofs.
posted by tiamat on Oct 21, 2003 - 35 comments

skulls
posted by crunchland on Sep 11, 2003 - 8 comments

The ARKive "is the Noah's Ark for the Internet era - the world's centralised digital library of films, photographs and associated recordings of species, accessible to all via the world wide web."
posted by tbc on Aug 14, 2003 - 4 comments

Species on the brink of Extinction: The Forgotten HoJo. Once numbering in the thousands during the 1970s, the recent death of the Times Square HoJo nyt leaves the world with only 10 of these endangered habitats. Check out this extensive gallery of the tragic empty carcasses that was once as abundant on the American landscape as the noble buffalo. Here is a good retrospective of the history from the earliest to its glory years. If you fancy a pilgrimage, eschew your crappy SXSWs and festivals this summer and embark on HOJOPALOOZA. I'll see you there with a single tear running down my cheek.
posted by Stan Chin on Mar 6, 2003 - 13 comments

The All Species Inventory is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory of all species of life on Earth within the next 25 years - a human generation. It's an interesting project, based on open-source ideology (check out their "Principles") but seems to be limiting itself to strictly Linnaean methods.
posted by Irontom on Sep 23, 2002 - 10 comments

We're finding new fauna in some of the most heavily-populated areas on earth. It sort of makes you wonder what how many species we never even know about as we slash and burn great hunks of the rain forests, wooded areas, and other biodiverse areas of the world. (And good grief, those bugs are huge!)
posted by mrmanley on Apr 5, 2002 - 9 comments

20 species we might lose in the next 20 years. From discover.com and the other "20's" articles on the main page are especially good too.
posted by skallas on Oct 12, 2000 - 1 comment