Extinction | featured news

Current extinction rate projections may be overestimating the role of habitat loss on species, a study suggest... Writing in the journal Nature, they said present figures overestimated rates by up to 160%, and called for updated, more accurate calculations.

Scientists thought a mysterious guinea pig-sized rodent species that hadn't been seen in 113 years was long extinct. Until one of them ambled up to two volunteer naturalists at a nature reserve in Colombia two weeks ago.

China's panda population is booming this year thanks to a record number of births in captivity, a rare accomplishment for the endangered species ...

Environmental experts have warned that the world's tiger population could soon be extinct because of illegal trophy hunting, deteriorating habitats and the use of tiger parts in eastern medicine.

If the harrowing plight of emperor penguins portrayed in the film "March of the Penguins" looked bad, it's nothing compared with the dire straits faced by many other penguin species.

The Alaotra Grebe, a small diving bird native to Madagascar has been officially classified extinct, according to a leading bird conservation organization.

Neanderthals, a long-extinct species, survive today in the genes of almost everyone outside Africa, according to an international research team who offer the first molecular evidence that early humans mated and produced children in liaisons with Neanderthals.

Conservationists say rate of new species slower than diversity loss caused by the destruction of habitats and climate change.

The number of tigers in the wild has dwindled to 3,200, the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday as it launched a campaign to save them.

The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.