Word: extinct
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iberian lynx, there's no choice. Severely overhunted for decades, the species has been declining rapidly since the 1950s, when the rabbit population it dines on was decimated by disease. Today the lynx is the world's most endangered cat, down to fewer than 200 in Spain and probably extinct in Portugal. "There are only two reproducing populations left in southern Spain," says Urs Breitenmoser of the Institute of Veterinary Virology in Bern, who co-chairs the IUCN/World Conservation Union's Cat Specialist Group. "We need a breeding program in order to re-create a viable population that is genetically...
...whole groups of things that are as unique as, say, whales are." Two years ago, Nissen and geologist Elizabeth Price discovered a plentiful site on ground that teams had walked over a hundred times previously: a bushfire had cleared away the grass to unveil an ancient graveyard for various extinct species. "At Riversleigh," says Archer's wife, project coprincipal Sue Hand, "there are always these episodes of serendipity...
...team is patient with neophytes fascinated by Riversleigh's extinct megafauna (though many of these creatures were known already from deposits elsewhere in Australia), among them the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon optatum, distantly related to the wombat; and the 3-m tall, 400-kg flightless bird Dromornis stirtoni, which had a beak large and sharp enough to tear the flesh off a kangaroo, if not as a predator then as a scavenger. Extracting the fossils of such creatures is harder than finding them. These palaeontologists aren't eggheads: they spend seven hours each day under a scorching sun levering boulders...
...Scanlon, who at 12 became fascinated with Australian snakes and is now Australia's leading expert on the fossilized type. He holds up the 25-million-year-old femur of one of those giant birds. There's a conspicuous puncture mark, a perfect match for the tooth of an extinct giant crocodile...
...spread and diversity. Now, Archer says, all that's left is "these toothless platypuses confined to a few river systems in eastern Australia." The animal's record reminds palaeontologists of that of the thylacines. Eight types used to roam the Riversleigh rainforests; the last type, the Tasmanian tiger, became extinct in the 1930s. "What we're saying," says Archer, "is, 'O.K., we failed that one. Let's learn from the thylacine. Don't take (the platypus) for granted, because if you push it, it's likely to vanish.'" But the threat is much broader than that. In Australia...