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The London Natural History Museum announced the 2022 winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. The 20 winners were selected from more than 38,000 entries.  The winning photos include a frenzied ball of bees, a dancing sea star, and the brushy mouth of a whale. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up!…

For a century, biologists have been intrigued by a species of Galápagos tortoise thought extinct. But a tortoise recently discovered on a volcanic island belonged to that species, a new paper says. DNA analysis showed the newly found tortoise came from the same lineage as one found in 1906. Loading Something is loading. A single…

Enlarge / Alpine chipmunks collected by pioneering naturalist Joseph Grinnell in the early 20th century are still preserved at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, geneticists used DNA extracted from them to trace how the chipmunks have evolved. Museum collections like this can give researchers at time machine to…

The vaquita porpoise, down to 10 individuals left, can still survive. Researchers found that the genetic makeup of the species is diverse enough to support recovery. The most serious threat to the surviving vaquita are illegal fishnets that trap and drown the animal. Loading Something is loading. The number of vaquita, a tiny, silver porpoise…

The bones of a pygmy mammoth. Humans haven't always been great to nature. But at least our ancestors may not have killed off island megafauna in the distant past, so that's something. New research, published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, suggests that there's not enough data to say that hominids in the…

The North Atlantic was once home to a bird that bore a remarkable similarity to penguins. The great auk, also known as “the original penguin,” was a large, flightless, black and white bird, that is said to have existed in the millions. Despite its appearance, the great auk is actually a relative of razorbills and…

A mass extinction event 2 billion years ago could have been bigger than the event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Stephen Shankland/CNET A mass extinction occurred around 2 billion years ago, wiping out up to 99.5%  of life on Earth, scientists have reportedly said. It killed off more of Earth's biosphere…

Enlarge / Bonobos carrying the footprint of an ancient, extinct species of ape. Climate change has thrown our beautifully balanced planet into chaos. As oceans and forests transform and ecosystems go into shock, perhaps a million species teeter on the edge of extinction. But there may still be hope for these organisms. Some will change…

Introduction The gene editing revolution is here. While human evolutionary changes over the years happened naturally, slowly, and on their own timeline, recent advances in science and technology are on their way to fundamentally disrupt the very evolutionary process that has made us who we are as a species. ADVERTISEMENT Today, gene modification tools like…

A resting Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis). Credit: Shutterstock Malaysia's last male Sumatran rhino has died, leaving just one of the rhinos, a captive female, in the entire country, a region that was once replete with the two-horned beasts, news sources reported. Wildlife experts in the country captured the male — nicknamed Kretam, or Tam for…