It is hard to track the blue whale, the ocean's largest creature, which has almost been killed off by commercial whaling and is now listed as an endangered species.
Unfortunately, frogs the world over are suffering a mass extinction. Perhaps something in the newly cracked genetic code can help save them before they croak.
If some creatures can tolerate lower pHs and others cannot, you might expect things to average out: the tolerant and adaptable prosper, the more pernickety perish.
Scientists say they have reconstructed around half of the genome of the woolly mammoth, a species that became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age some 11,000 years ago.
While there are a dozen or more mass extinctions in the geological record, the Cretaceous mass extinction has always intrigued paleontologists because it marks the end of the age of the dinosaurs.
Several other mass extinctions in the geological record have been tentatively identified with large impacts, but none is so dramatic as the Cretaceous event.
As a result of pollution, climate change, overfishing and ocean acidification, one-quarter of global reef cover has been lost in the last 50 years and one-third of reef species are endangered.
WHEN, a few years ago, word came that British bird lovers anxious about the decline of the house sparrow had appointed a sparrow tsar, it seemed that the tsar vogue must have reached its zenith.