
Vikings probably hunted Iceland's walruses to extinction for ivory
16 September 2019
Iceland had a unique population of walruses that disappeared after people first settled there – probably because the Vikings hunted them to extinction

16 September 2019
Iceland had a unique population of walruses that disappeared after people first settled there – probably because the Vikings hunted them to extinction

14 June 2018
Dozens of species all around the world are abandoning the day and becoming more active at night, to avoid contact with humans

21 May 2018
The biomass of living organisms on the planet has halved since human civilisation began, and humans now outweigh all wild mammals tenfold

17 May 2018
Cannabis – the source of the drug marijuana – virtually disappeared from Europe just as farmers arrived, so they didn’t get the chance to grow it for another 4500 years

11 May 2018
Many of us carry DNA inherited from Neanderthals, but we can’t be sure how it affects us. Stem cells with Neanderthal DNA could tell us

23 March 2018
An assessment of Earth’s biodiversity predicts catastrophic losses within decades, with severe knock-on effects for human civilisation like shortages of food

5 February 2018
Wooden tools are hardly ever preserved, but a cache found in Italy suggests Neanderthals made them with fire and used them to dig up foods like tubers

8 December 2017
Elephants, giraffes, giant elands and chimpanzees are being decimated by poachers linked to violent militias in a lawless region of central Africa

6 December 2017
Even though other countries are clamping down on illegal ivory, the unconstrained trade in Japan may offer loopholes for criminals to keep selling ivory – fuelling elephant poaching

10 November 2017
Many giant mammals in the Americas have died out but it has been hard to say whether humans or natural events were responsible. Now, in the Caribbean at least, we know