On July 19th, 1989, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi lit the match on twelve tons of elephant tusks soaked in gasoline. The elephants had been the victims of a relentless…
In 2008, a team of researchers boarded an expedition vessel and set sail for the anchovy-rich waters off the coast of Peru. They were searching for a place to extract…
Madagascar is often called the “red island” because of its iron-rich soils. In school, Malagasy children are taught that their island was green until human beings destroyed most of the…
In 2016, researchers digging along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon uncovered hundreds of fossils of rodents, bats and other animals. Among the fossils was an…
In November 2017, two volunteers assisting researchers of the Florida Museum of Natural History dig through a large excavation site in North Florida unearthed the bones of a bird. Those…
For a long time, some of the fossil remains that had been excavated from a site in western Kenya in the late 1970s languished in a drawer at Nairobi National…
The greatest natural history repository in South America, Brazil’s National Museum was consumed by fire last Sunday — much was destroyed, but not all.
Megaherbivore collapse particularly acute in Asia and Africa. Hunting may be the single greatest threat to the world's endangered megaherbivores. Skinned antelope for sale in Guinea, Africa. Photo by: Terry…
Capybaras, here in Colombia, are the world's largest rodents today. But even they would have been dwarfed by Josephoartigasia monesi. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The world's largest rodent today…
All of the world's moas exterminated by just a few thousand people A Haast's eagle divebombing a pair of moas. A new study finds that it only took a few…
The Amazon rainforest in Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. The Amazon is the largest tropical forest on the planet, covering about 6.5 million square kilometers, although…
Artist's rendition of the coastal moa, which a new paper says was hunted to extinction, along with all of its relative, by humans. Image by: Michael B. H./Creative Commons 3.0.…
Based on a single tooth from Australia, scientists believe they have discovered a giant, meter-long (3.3 feet) duck-billed platypus that likely fed on fish, frogs, and even turtles, according to…
Around twelve thousand of years ago, the Amazon was home to a menagerie of giant creatures: the heavily armored glyptodons, the elephant-sized ground sloth, and the rhino-like toxodons among others.…
Reconstruction of Carbonemys preying upon a small crocodylomorph. Courtesy of Cadena et al. 2012 Researchers working in Colombia has discovered the fossilized remains of a giant freshwater turtle that lived…
An extinct marsupial mega-herbivore, Diprotodon optatum. Drawing by Peter Murray. Image © Science/AAAS. The theory that humans, and not climate change, was primarily responsible for the extinction of giant marsupials…
An artist's recreation of Microraptor, a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 130 million years ago. Recent research has shown that the dinosaur had iridescent plumage. Image by: Jason Brougham/University…
Ocean acidification growing at a rate faster than anytime in 300 million years. To the left a discoaster of marine plankton before an ocean acidification event 56 million years ago,…
Coyote feeding on elk carcass in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by: Jim Peaco/U.S. National Park Service. Not long ago, geologically speaking, coyotes (Canis latrans) were bigger and more robust than…
Two Kairuku penguins come ashore, passing a stranded Waipatia dolphin. Artwork by Chris Gaskin, owner and copyright owner: Geology Museum, University of Otago.. Around 25 million years ago a penguin…
Innovative research has made a long-extinct katydid—which inhabited the world of dinosaurs like stegosaurus, allosaurus, and diplodocus—sing again. The discovery of an incredibly well-preserved fossil of a new species of…
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey envisions the future with a view that remembers the past Looking Back: A family world famous for discovery. Richard Leakey and his parents, Louis and Mary…
Modern-day Nile crocodile Researchers excavating a coal mine in Colombia have discovered a previously unknown species of prehistoric crocodile. The beast is described in the September 15 issue of the…
Spray toad Kihansi saat ini punah keberadaannya di alam liar setelah habitatnya terkena dampak sebuah bendungan. Foto oleh: Rhett A. Butler. Jadi, ini kabar baiknya: kepunahan massal, keenam di dunia,…
The Kihansi spray toad is currently extinct in the wild after its habitat was impacted by a dam. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. So, here's the good news: a mass…
Ecologists say they have used a computer model to put to rest a nearly century-old debate. Did Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the world's most well-known dinosaurs, hunt down its prey…
Paleontologists working in China have discovered a first for dinosaurs: a species with only one finger. Named Linhenykus monodactylus, the extinct species stood only about two feet high and weighed…
Scientists have discovered an extinct massive stork, standing nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meter) and weighing 35 pounds (15 kilograms), which would have shared the island of Flores with the…
A new study in Science has found that the incredible biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest goes back much further than expected, perhaps upending old ideas about how the Amazon basin…
A new study in Science is likely to reopen the contentious debate about the impact of climate change on tropical rainforests. Scientific modeling of future climate conditions in tropical rainforests,…