Woolly Mammoth Could Soon Be Resurrected

(NEWSER) - A nearly perfectly preserved 37,000-year-old baby mammoth is giving up tantalizing secrets about her species, scientists report. The creature, dubbed Lyuba by researchers, still sports clumps of hair and eyelashes, according to the Telegraph. Scientists have been able to examine stomach contents and the mineral makeup of the bones and teeth in the animal, found 2 years ago by reindeer herders in Siberia. More»

Arctic plant found by Russian scientists may be oldest ever revived

(NEWSER) - A flower that last bloomed when saber-toothed cats roamed the Earth is once again alive and growing. Russian scientists say they've dug up remnants of a 32,000-year-old plant from Siberia's frozen wasteland and successfully cloned 36 more of them from its fruit tissue, the New York Times reports. Now comes the next stage: convincing a somewhat skeptical scientific community that the plant—by far the oldest ever revived—really dates back that far. More»

And they weren't even looking for them

(NEWSER) - Scientists have stumbled upon a monkey many thought no longer existed. Seeking leopards and orangutans, the researchers placed camera traps in an Indonesian forest. When they checked the pictures, they were astonished to see images of large gray monkeys none had ever seen before, the AP reports. Photographs of the Miller's Grizzled Langur are nearly impossible to find, so the researchers could only compare the images to museum sketches. More»

Woolly mammoths interbred with southern cousins

(NEWSER) - Some 11,000 years ago the American West was the site of some inter-species mammoth lovin', researchers say. Scientists analyzing the DNA of mammoths unearthed in Utah and Wyoming were amazed to find that the mitochondrial genome of what they believed was a Columbian mammoth—which thrived in warm parts of the Americas—was nearly identical to that of woolly mammoths, who preferred the Arctic tundra, the Christian Science Monitor reports. More»

But it's in early stages, so there is hope, new paper says

(NEWSER) - Some conservationists have been using the term "the sixth extinction" for a few years now—referring to the possibility that more than 75% of existing species could disappear for the sixth time in the planet's history—but there's been little factual proof to back up the frightening prediction. Until now. A new paper warns that if no changes are made, we might indeed be at the beginning of the sixth mass extinction to strike the Earth. If the rate of extinction, which is currently accelerating, continues unabated—and if all the animals currently listed as "critically endangered" do go extinct—then a mass extinction could transpire within as little as three centuries or as long as 2,200 years, cautions the paper published in the journal Nature. More»