The sad history of the Pyrenean Ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) is a powerful example of species loss due to causes related to human activity. DNA analyses of Pyrenean Ibex found evidence that, after a demographic expansion about 20,000 years ago, its population went through a bottleneck caused by hunting, inbreeding and other factors, which ultimately caused its extinction. Their research is published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
Earlier this year, a research article triggered a media frenzy by predicting that as a result of an ongoing rapid decline, nearly half of the world’s insects will be no more pretty soon Amidst worldwide publicity and talks about ‘Insectageddon’: the extinction of 40% of the world’s insects, as estimated in a recent scientific review, a critical […]
While 2018 marks the centenary of the death of the last captive Carolina parakeet – North America’s only native parrot, a team of researchers have shed new light on the previously known geographical range of the species, which was officially declared extinct in 1920. Combining observations and specimen data, the new Carolina parakeet occurrence dataset, […]
During her study on fossil insects of the order Hymenoptera at China’s Capitol Normal University, student Longfeng Li visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, carrying two unidentified wasp specimens that were exceptionally well-preserved in Burmese amber. This type of fossilized tree resin is known for the quality of the fossil specimens which […]
While new species are most commonly described based on recent field collections, undertaken at poorly explored places, some are identified in museum collections, where they have spent decades before being recognised as new to science. Such is the case of an unusually large and likely extinct ground beetle found at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, […]
