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Extinction is a fact of life. Could we stop it – or even reverse it?

11 December 2019

The fossil record tells us extinctions happen all the time. The question is what part we play – and whether we could ever bring back creatures like the dinosaurs

Wild animals are turning nocturnal to keep away from humans

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

Britain’s hedgehog population has fallen 66 per cent in 20 years

12 June 2018

Britain only has 58 wild mammal species to start with, and many have declined sharply in number since 1995 – with hedgehogs suffering a particularly severe fall

Africa's 2000-year-old trees of life are suddenly dying off

11 June 2018

In the past decade most of the oldest baobabs, many of them sprouted over two millennia ago, have died unexpectedly and few new ones are sprouting

Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs caused massive global warming

24 May 2018

The asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago caused dramatic climate change, which could mean we are underestimating how much the planet will warm in the coming centuries

Half of life on Earth has vanished since we arrived on the scene

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

Chinese giant salamanders may already be virtually extinct

21 May 2018

Researchers spent four years looking for Chinese giant salamanders and only found 24 – and that’s not even the worst bit of news

Harsh: Europe's cannabis died just as the first farmers arrived

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