DNA analysis has confirmed the
death, by poaching, of the last Javan rhino in Vietnam. This marks the official extinction of the Vietnamese subspecies of Javan rhinoceros. The entire species is now represented by just 35 individuals from the Indonesian subspecies, all of whom reside in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia.
posted by Scientist
on Jan 16, 2013 -
52 comments
A new monkey species, known to locals as the 'lesula' (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), has been
discovered in a largely unexploited rainforest within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
posted by Wordshore
on Sep 12, 2012 -
44 comments
This species was around seventy-six million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the continents were splitting. The impact of a colossal space rock wiped out the dinosaurs but did not finish them off, even though their habitat was close to 'ground zero'. They survived the super-hot "greenhouse Earth" of the Eocene, major changes in global ecosystems, and the Ice Age (take that, Scrat). They have grooved teeth which inject venom into their prey; very strong limbs which end in long sharp claws. They have only three native predators. However this
'living fossil' called the
Solenodon could soon be wiped out by mongoose, people and
wild dogs.
[more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser
on Jun 2, 2010 -
9 comments
"Bryn the pygmy rabbit died in 2008, marking the end of her genetic line. This subpopulation lost its sagebrush habitat as the land was developed for agriculture ... In an off-exhibit room at the Oregon Zoo, the staff was quiet, even reverent, as they brought in Bryn. She was one of two Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits left, and since both were old females, this was a solemn occasion."
Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species
posted by melissam
on May 30, 2010 -
16 comments
Attenborough's Pitcher, an "Udderly Weird Yam," a two-inch phallic mushroom already immortalized on
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the "Bombardier Worm" ("Chaff worm" would seem a more accurate name) are just four of the newly described species making the International Institute for Species Exploration's totally arbitrary
Top 10 New Species list.
[more inside]
posted by dust of the stars
on May 26, 2010 -
6 comments
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
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
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
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
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
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
![The creature - about 168mm in length and pink in colour [image]](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59831000/jpg/_59831441_gegeneophisprimus_photoramachandrankotharambath.jpg){kind=link}
