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Europe's rarest seabird will be extinct within 60 years

Urgent action is needed to stop the Balearic sheerwater being drowned in fishing lines and nets, say scientists. The bird breeds in the Balearic Islands, sometimes stopping off in British waters as it migrates north. Research shows the global population is not sustainable in the long term. There are about 3,000 breeding pairs left. The main threat to the bird is becoming entangled in fishing gear, according to findings published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Other risks include hunting by the likes of cats and other small mammals. Prof Tim Guilford of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford is co-researcher on the study. He told "The survival of adults from one year to the next and especially of young adults is much lower than we thought. "The species is unsustainable - it is on the road to extinction." Estimates suggest about half of deaths in adult birds are due to accidental capture in fishing lines and nets. ...

An extinct armoured animals belongs within the family tree of modern armadillos,study of 12,000-year-old DNA

The glyptodonts roamed South America for millions of years until the last Ice Age, and some grew as big as cars. Their physical attributes - notably an impenetrable shell - already placed them as likely cousins of armadillos. Now, researchers say they are not even a sister group, but a subfamily. "Glyptodonts should probably be considered a subfamily of gigantic armadillos," said Frederic Delsuc, from the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) and Montpellier University in France. Dr Delsuc and his colleagues used computer predictions to reconstruct some likely DNA sequences of armadillo ancestors, based on the genes of living species. They then made RNA "bait" based on these sequences and used it to fish for glyptodont DNA in a tiny, mashed-up sample of shell from a fossil in a Buenos Aires museum.This technique allows scientists to confidently identify real DNA sequences from the ancient target species, without worrying about contaminating ge...

The birds helped Charles Darwin refine his theory of evolution going extinct, according to a new study

Finches in the Galapagos Islands are being threatened by a parasitic fly that attacks their young. A new mathematical model suggests that the birds may succumb to this pest in 50 years. But the authors say that human intervention could alleviate the risk of extinction. During his time on the Galapagos in the early 1830s, Charles Darwin noticed that finches on different islands in the chain were quite similar but had large variations in their beaks, depending on the local food source. Because the islands - which belong to Ecuador - are so far from the mainland, Darwin concluded that the birds had begun as one species and then started to evolve into separate varieties of finch. There are between 14 and 18 species on the Galapagos - but this study looked at one of the most common, the medium ground finch. Around 270,000 of these birds are found on Santa Cruz island.The finches are threatened by a nest fly which lays parasitic larvae in their nests which...

Extinct three-horn ruminant Xenokeryx amidalae is a close relation to modern giraffes

A new investigation challenges the previously held view that this unusual looking creature is related to North American ancestors of deer. Scientists say the new study will help us better understand the evolution of cranial features such as horns, as well as the evolution of land ecosystems. For the last 40 million years, ruminants have represented a big proportion of the world's large herbivores. Ruminants include cattle, sheep, goats, deer, giraffes, antelopes, camels, and other extinct species. Palaeomerycids, now extinct, were strange-looking three-horned ruminants found in many areas, from Spain to China, some 5-23 million years ago, during what is termed the Miocene Period. Dr Israel Sánchez and his collaborators from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain, studied well-preserved remains of a new palaeomerycid - Xenokeryx amidalae.The skull was in particularly good condition and it included teeth, as well as the three h...

An international scientists unearthed fossils of reptile and amphibian in Brazil, dating from 278 million years ago

The fossils include two new species of "dvinosaur" - extinct cousins of modern salamanders - which were about 40cm long, one of them with fangs and gills. South America's oldest ever terrestrial reptile skeleton was also in the haul. The finds are reported in the journal Nature Communications. The ancient reptile is a lizard-like creature called Captorhinus aguti, previously only found in North America. These discoveries, all from north-eastern Brazil, are noteworthy because little is known about the plants and animals that occupied this region during the Permian period; the southern tropics of the "supercontinent" Pangaea are not well-populated by fossil finds.One of the study's co-authors, Dr Martha Richter from the Natural History Museum in London, said: "This discovery is remarkable as most of what we understand about the evolution and adaptation of amphibians through time is based on animals located in Europe and North America. "No...