Word: extinct
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...scientists, academics and filmmakers from the British broadcaster visited the South Pacific island of Papua New Guinea this past spring to film a nature documentary and in the process discovered more than 30 new species of animals. Among the unknown creatures - all living inside the crater of the extinct volcano Mount Bosavi - was a giant rat that measured 32.2 in. and weighed more than 3.3 lb., making it one of the largest rodents on Earth (scientists provisionally named the housecat-size animal the Bosavi woolly rat). The historic find also included 16 new species of frogs, at least three...
...turns out that even during the relatively peaceful eras between global calamities, during what is known as background extinction, whole families of species can disappear, pushed out of existence together. And it's not random. According to a new study published in the August 7 issue of Science, vulnerability to extinction runs in families, meaning that some groups of species have a higher likelihood of becoming extinct than others. "It turns out that some branches of the tree of life are more extinction-prone than others," says Kaustuv Roy, a biology professor at the University of California, San Diego. "Those...
...simple bivalves because they have a long and detailed fossil record. Going back to the Jurassic period, researchers analyzed when each genus - a taxonomic category just above species - disappeared, and whether relatives vanished at the same time. On average they found that closely related groups of clams went extinct together at a rate that was more often than expected by blind chance - generally those groups of species were confined to a fairly small geographic area. "Extinctions tend to be clustered, which means the effects tend to be worse than what you might expect from random," says Roy. "That's true...
While Churchill's research may have shed more light on the cause of Shanidar 3's death, the reasons for his species' fate remain a mystery. Some scientists believe that Neanderthals went extinct after a particularly volatile period of climate change shrank their arboreal hunting grounds. Others suggest they may have interbred with humans. A newer theory focuses on a violent end at the hands of Homo sapiens. Earlier this year, Fernando Rozzi, an anthropologist at Paris's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, found a Neanderthal jawbone that had been butchered in precisely the same way that humans...
...Despite the fact that a paleontologist would have fits over the various licenses co-directors Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier take with the dinosaur world ("I thought these guys were extinct," Ellie says, echoing our confusion), the movie does improve once it gets into the lush underground. That's largely because of the introduction of a moderately entertaining character named Buck (Simon Pegg), an eye-patch-wearing weasel who lives for the thrill of a dinosaur hunt. He's wisecracking, swashbuckling and, even with a pelt, harks back to Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow...