When the Kinks' Ray Davies penned the tune 'Last of the Steam-Powered Trains,' the vanishing locomotives stood as nostalgic symbols of a simpler English life. But for a paleontologist, the replacement ...

How did the woolly mammoth, an ambassador of the Ice Age, end up confined to modern-day Wrangel Island? And what ultimately caused their extinction? New evidence suggests it wasn’t poor genetics as ...

The term “de-extinction” often conjures images of Jurassic Park-style genetic manipulation, complete with ethical dilemmas and ecological chaos. But the reality of functional de-extinction—the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. There’s an important concept in evolutionary biology called ...

From dire wolves to woolly mammoths, the idea of resurrecting extinct species has captured the public imagination. Colossal Biosciences, the Dallas-based biotech company leading the charge, has made ...

Great auks (Pinguinus impennis) were large flightless birds that thrived on rocky islands in the North Atlantic for thousands of years. However, humans hunted them to extinction within just a few ...