extinction

Can De-Extinction Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth?

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Could mammoths walk on Earth in the next decade?

The idea of de-extinction has been around for some time now and many have pondered upon it. Now, a startup plans to make this idea a reality by bringing back the woolly mammoth from the dead, thousands of years after it went extinct. The startup is partially funded by Harvard University’s renowned geneticist, George Church, and the company is called Colossal.

The woolly mammoth roamed the Arctic for thousands of years before eventually going extinct. Early humans began hunting these mammoths for food and used their bones as tools. Scientific studies show that changing climate conditions forced these freely moving animals into smaller habitats, where human hunting finished them off almost 4000 years ago. Models also show that if it weren’t for the hunting, the mammoths could have survived until recently.

Either out of guilt or to take the next big leap in science, researchers have been pondering about resurrecting the mammoth. This Jurassic Park-like experiment has also been aided by the finding of well-preserved mammoth remains that hold bits of mammoths’ DNA in them. Combining these with recent technological developments in the field, the resurrection or “de-extinction”, as it is called, is quite possible, the company says. 

The company has condensed the entire process into a 13-step high-level plan on its website. The first step begins with the sourcing and then sequencing of the genome of the Asian elephant, a mammal that is reported to share 99.6 percent of its DNA with the woolly mammoth. The team will then sequence the genome of the woolly mammoth that the researchers in George Church’s Harvard Lab secured in 2018. 

Since most characteristics are encoded by the sequences in our genomes, the researchers will be able to identify regions in the Asian elephant’s genome that differ from the woolly mammoth’s. Using CRISPR, the team will then edit the genome of the Asian elephant and verify if the edited cells demonstrate abilities to survive in cold environments. Once this is confirmed, they will insert the editing nucleus in an egg cell and then fertilize it artificially. Once complete, the cell will develop into an embryo that will then be implanted in an African elephant for the gestation of up to 22 months, bringing the woolly mammoth back on Earth.

In an interview with Venture Beat, Colossal said that all the fundamental science needed to achieve this is now solved, and the company could see their first woolly mammoth calves in the next four to six years. Co-founder Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur in the tech industry, said that the formation of the company will accelerate the research work.

But the de-extinction effort is not just for goosebumps. Colossal believes that returning the woolly mammoth to the Arctic grasslands will help in arresting the effects of climate change. In their time, the mammoths traversed vast regions in the Artic and conserved its environmental health. Restoring the mammoth to its habitat will help in methane suppression and carbon sequestration, thereby helping climate change. 

Scientists Say This Is the Probability AI Will Drive Humans Extinct

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Is that… is that a lot?

Extremely Bad Outcome

According to a new survey that took into account the input from 2,778 researchers, there’s a not insignificant risk of artificial intelligence triggering human extinction.

Just over half of the AI researchers surveyed say there’s a five percent chance of humans will be driven to extinction, among other “extremely bad outcomes.”

Ten percent of respondents, for instance, said it’s possible machines could outperform humans in “every possible task” by 2027. Half of the respondents said that’d be possible by 2047.

But it’s not all doom and gloom: 68.3 percent of respondents said that “good outcomes from superhuman AI” are more likely than bad ones.

Most of all, the survey highlights the sheer amount of disagreement and uncertainty among researchers, with broad disagreement about whether progress should be sped up or slowed down.

Numbers Game

The five percent figure is nonetheless telling, noting a significant perceived danger.

“It’s an important signal that most AI researchers don’t find it strongly implausible that advanced AI destroys humanity,” author Katja Grace at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in California, told New Scientist. “I think this general belief in a non-minuscule risk is much more telling than the exact percentage risk.”

As the survey notes, “forecasting is difficult in general, and subject-matter experts have been observed to perform poorly.”

“Our participants’ expertise is in AI, and they do not, to our knowledge, have any unusual skill at forecasting in general,” the paper continues.

Educated Guesses

But that doesn’t mean their word should be discredited.

“While unreliable, educated guesses are what we must all rely on, and theirs are informed by expertise in the relevant field,” the researchers write. “These forecasts should be part of a broader set of evidence from sources such as trends in computer hardware, advancements in AI capabilities, economic analyses, and insights from forecasting experts.”

In the short term, instead of expecting a dystopian extinction event triggered by a malicious AI, the vast majority of AI researchers surveyed warned about deepfakes, manipulation of public opinion, the creation of dangerous viruses, or AI systems that allow individuals to prosper at the expense of others.

And given the upcoming US presidential election, all eyes will be on AI and its unnerving capability to distort the truth in a believable way.

5G looks like it’s the next best thing in tech, but it’s really a Trojan horse for harming humanity

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Image: 5G looks like it’s the next best thing in tech, but it’s really a Trojan horse for harming humanity

Many so-called “experts” are claiming that it’ll be a huge step forward for innovation in everything from manufacturing and transportation, to medicine and beyond. But in reality, 5G technology represents an existential threat to humanity – a “phony war” on the people who inhabit this planet we call Earth, and all in the name of “progress.”

Writing for GreenMedInfo, Claire Edwards, a former editor and trainer in intercultural writing for the United Nations (U.N.), warns that 5G might end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of the state of public health. Electro-hypersensitivity (EHS), she says, could soon become a global pandemic as a result of 5G implementation, with people developing severe health symptoms that inhibit their ability to live normal lives.

This “advanced” technology, Edwards warns, involves the use of special “laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation,” or EMR, that are basically blasted “from banks of thousands of tiny antennas” installed all over the place, typically on towers and poles located within just a couple hundred feet of one another.

While she still worked for the U.N., Edwards tried to warn her superiors about the dangers of 5G EMR, only to have these petitions fall on deaf ears. This prompted her to contact the U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who then pushed the World Health Organization (WHO) to take a closer look into the matter – though this ended up being a dead end as well.

For more news about 5G and its threat to humanity, be sure to check out Conspiracy.news.

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Elon Musk is planning to launch 4,425 5G satellites in to Earth’s orbit THIS JUNE

Edwards worries particularly about 5G implementation in space, as existing space law is so woefully inadequate that countries all around the world, including the U.S., will likely blanket the atmosphere in 5G equipment, turning our entire planet into an EMR hell.

Elon Musk of Tesla fame is one such purveyor of 5G technology who’s planning to launch an astounding 4,425 5G satellites in to Earth’s orbit by June 2019. This means that, in a matter of just a few months, 5G will be everywhere and completely inescapable.

“There are no legal limits on exposure to EMR,” Edwards writes.

“Conveniently for the telecommunications industry, there are only non-legally enforceable guidelines such as those produced by the grandly named International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, which turns out to be like the Wizard of Oz, just a tiny little NGO in Germany that appoints its own members, none of whom is a medical doctor or environmental expert.”

Edwards sees 5G implementation as eventually leading to a “catastrophe for all life in Earth” in the form of “the last great extinction.” She likens it to a “biological experiment” representing the “most heinous manifestation of hubris and greed in human history.”

There’s already evidence to suggest that 5G implementation in a few select cities across the United States, including in Sacramento, California, is causing health problems for people who live near 5G equipment. At firehouses where 5G equipment was installed, for instance, firefighters are reporting things like memory problems and confusion.

Some people are also reporting reproductive issues like miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as nosebleeds and insomnia, all stemming from the presence of 5G transmitters.

Edwards encourages folks to sign The Stop 5G Appeal if they care about protecting people, animals, insects, and the planet from this impending 5G assault.

“Our newspapers are now casually popularizing the meme that human extinction would be a good thing, but when the question becomes not rhetorical but real, when it’s your life, your child, your community, your environment that is under immediate threat, can you really subscribe to such a suggestion?” Edwards asks.

93 Percent of Ayurvedic Medicinal Plants Are Now Facing Extinction

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Ninety three percent of wild medicinal plants used for making ayurvedic medicines are endangered and efforts are being made to relocate them from their usual habitat to protect them. The threat to the plants came to the fore in an assessment exercise in different states carried out by the Botanical Survey of India.

Ayurvedic Medicinal Plants

Researchers have recently found that extinction rates are currently 1000 times higher than normal due to deforestation, changes in climate, and the depletion of ocean fisheries.

The assessments were done for a total of 359 prioritized wild medicinal plant species. Out of this, 335 have been assigned Red List status ranging from critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable to near-threatened.

In addition, a total of 15 such species recorded in trade have been found threatened, officials in the health ministry’s Ayush department said.

Some of the rare plants reported to be threatened, have been relocated during the last decade, including Utleria Salicifolia and Hydnocarpus Pentandra in Western Ghats, Gymnocladus Assamicus and Begonia Tessaricarpa from Arunachal Pradesh and Agapetes Smithiana in Sikkim.

The assessments have involved conducting Conservation Assessment and Management Prioritisation using International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List Categories.

The IUCN Global Species Programme working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) has been assessing the conservation status of species, subspecies, varieties, and even selected subpopulations on a global scale for the past 50 years in order to highlight taxa threatened with extinction, and thereby promote their conservation.

The officials said the medicinal plant resources are threatened by over exploitation to meet the demand of herbal industries.

As per the information received from the Ministry of Environment and Forests in India, about 95 percent of such plants are harvested from the wild, primarily from forests.

The National Medicinal Plants Board constituted in November 2000, has been implementing a Central sector scheme for development and cultivation of medicinal plants since 2000-01.

This scheme was revised and renamed as “Central Sector Scheme for Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants” during 2008-09.

States forest departments have been given assistance for protection and propagation of such endangered species, especially used by the herbal industries.

Projects for setting up of 29 Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas (MPCAs) have also been implemented in the states covering mainly the medicinal plants viz Asoka, Guggal and Dashmool varieties.

In addition, a new “Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National Mission on Medicinal Plants” with a large outlay has been implemented since 2008-09 by National Medicinal Plants Board. A total of 24 states have been covered under the scheme.

The IUCN Global Species Programme maintains the information behind The IUCN Red List in a centralized database as part of the Species Information Service (SIS).

Sleep May Hold Key to PTSD

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Sleeplessness on the battlefield may lay the groundwork for PTSD

  • Medpage Today

Human volunteers who learned that a certain visual signal leads to an electric shock were more likely to respond fearfully to the signal days later when they were sleep-deprived, compared with controls allowed to sleep normally, a researcher said here.

The finding suggests that “treating sleep [problems] might enhance treatment of PTSD” or post-traumatic stress disorder, said Laura Straus, a doctoral candidate at the University of California San Diego who led the prospective, parallel group study.

It showed that retention of what is called the extinction of fear — a normal process in which after exposure to some trauma, people “unlearn” the association with circumstances that accompanied the initial event when the same circumstances later occur with no trauma — was impaired in sleep-deprived individuals.

Straus presented the study in a platform session atSLEEP 2015, sponsored by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

After being trained to associate a blue circle with electric shock (a low-level current applied to the wrist), those who were then made to stay awake 36 consecutive hours the next day were more likely to still be showing electromyographic patterns in the eyelid (blink EMG) that are known to signal fear, she said.

A number of animal experiments involving extreme sleep deprivation had previously indicated that fear responses were prolonged when rodents were kept awake. In particular, both the extinction of fear (which normally occurs within a day or two) and the subsequent retention of that extinction were impaired in sleep-deprived animals. But such an experiment with human subjects has not been reported before, Straus said.

For the trial, she and colleagues recruited 61 mostly young, healthy volunteers (mean age 24, range 18-38) of whom 39% were women. They were randomized to three groups and, over the course of 4 days, tested four times with blink EMG: once at baseline, once after the shock training, and twice more over the later days.

For the shock training, all participants underwent a series of short sessions during which they were shown either a blue or a yellow circle. When it was blue, a shock was delivered; when yellow, no shock was delivered. At the end of this and subsequent sessions, participants underwent blink EMG testing when shown the colored circles.

At the next session, the next day, participants were again shown the blue and yellow circles in repeated sessions, but this time no shocks were delivered with either one. Ordinarily, blink EMG-signaled fear responses to the blue circle would be attenuated in this session as part of the fear extinction process.

The final session was structured similarly. Again, the normal response is an attenuation of responses to the blue circle.

The group assignments varied the timing of sleep deprivation. In the control group, they were allowed to sleep normally throughout the study. Group 2 was made to stay awake 36 hours between the training session and the next session that would measure fear extinction. In the third group, the 36-hour sleep deprivation occurred between the third and final testing sessions, so possibly affecting recall of extinction but not affecting the initial strength of the extinction.

Results were that, compared with the controls, Group 3 showed no significant differences in the attenuation of fear responses over the course of the study.

 In contrast, Group 2 — somewhat surprisingly, Straus said — showed close to the normal level of extinction, but recall of that extinction was significantly poorer as measured in the final session. That is, they showed significantly greater blink EMG signals compared with the control group at the final testing.

This impairment of extinction recall is similar in many ways with the development of PTSD in humans, and the role of sleep deprivation is especially relevant in the context of military personnel. In battle (and often elsewhere in the general theater of combat operations) people often go without sleep for more than 24 hours.

Some previous studies in humans have suggested not only that trauma leads to sleeplessness, and also that sleep deprivation prolongs retention of fearful memories and associations, but not with a prospective design and such long periods of deprivation, Straus said.

Disappearance of fifth hen harrier fuels concerns bird heading towards extinction .

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The mysterious disappearance of a fifth hen harrier this spring has fuelled fears that England’s most endangered bird of prey is being persecuted towards extinction.

The RSPB confirmed that a male hen harrier had disappeared from its nest in Bowland, Lancashire, leading to the fifth nest failure in the north of England this spring. Lancashire Police has appealed for information about what happened to the protected upland bird of prey.

Graham Jones, the RSPB’s conservation manager for the RSPB in North West England, said: “All of the RSPB and United Utilities staff and volunteers who have been monitoring the hen harrier nests in Bowland are devastated by this latest disappearance, as are the estate’s shooting tenants.

“However, we are now more committed than ever to rescuing this beautiful bird from the brink of extinction in England.”

The news comes only days after the RSPB confirmed another male hen harrier had disappeared from its nest in Cumbria. The last sighting of the latest missing Bowland male bird was on 29 May when it was spotted passing food to the female, however RSPB volunteers became concerned by its prolonged absence and on 1 June discovered the nest had been abandoned and that the eggs were cold.

Bowland Forest has been called the “last stronghold in England” for the harried birds, but four of the species have now disappeared mysteriously from the area in recent months, while earlier this week a bird was reporting missing from an RSPB reserve at Geltsdale in Cumbria.

Of all of the UK’s the stealthy hen harrier is the most intensively persecuted and while there is thought to be enough suitable habitats for up to 300 breeding pairs of hen harriers in England, only four pairs bred in 2014. This year only a handful of nesting pairs are thought to remain, though there is hope the RSPB may discover new nest sites in the next month.

Officially the RSPB declines to speculate on the cause of the hen harrier disappearances citing possible future criminal prosecutions, but they come against a backdrop of fierce conflict between “rogue gamekeepers” who are alleged to kill the animal, which eats red grouse chick, and wildlife conservationists. The RSPB does point to a 2008 commissioned report by Natural England which found that it was very unusual for male hen harrier to abandon an active nest in most places.

The RSBP stages 24-hours watches to protect breeding sites, but there are fears “rogue gamekeepers” are targeting the birds as they travel long distances to feed, often on young grouse chicks

Lorraine Ellwood, Lancashire Police Rural Policing and Wildlife Co-ordinator, said: “We remain open minded as to the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the male harriers, and are exploring all possibilities of both natural and criminal intent.”

The disappearance at Bowland comes as the RSPB is involved in high-profile row with former cricketer Sir Ian Botham, who owns a grouse moor on the North York Moors and fronts You Forgot the Birds, a campaign group which claims the bird charity is obsessed with birds of prey and fails to protest other species.

You Forgot the Birds has claimed that “bird bothering” by bird enthusiasts in Bowland could be responsible for the latest failed nest site by scarring away nesting birds.

Sir Ian Botham told the Independent: “Birds are twitchy by nature. They have evolved over millions of years to protect themselves against predators. So it is hardly surprising if hen harriers, which have remarkable senses of hearing and sight could be frightened by humans surround their nests.”

However the RSPB rejected the claim. A spokesperson for the charity said: “The allegations set out by grouse industry-funded You Forgot the Birds are very serious and we have seen no evidence to support them. If they have any evidence to back up these claims, we would urge them to report it to the police… The real issue here, though, is the survival of hen harriers. A wealth of scientific studies, including the Government’s own reports, indicate illegal persecution is the main constraint. To save hen harriers, we must end illegal persecution. The RSPB and our partners are already committed to doing this and the grouse shooting industry must play its part to stamp out wildlife crime.

“The RSPB’s staff and volunteers on the ground do an incredible job of trying to protect hen harrier nests around the clock. Their job is one of the most physically and emotionally draining in conservation. They work in extremely difficult conditions and their dedication, passion and expertise is second to none.  We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude.”

Earth is headed for its sixth mass extinction.

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The rapid depletion of Earth’s biodiversity indicates that the planet is in the early stages of its sixth mass extinction of life since becoming habitable 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study published in Science.

Human activity, including a doubling of its population in the past 35 years, has driven the decline of animal life on Earth, the researchers concluded.

AFP Photo / NASA

There has been a 25 percent average decline rate of remaining terrestrial vertebrates, and a 45 percent decline rate in the abundance of invertebrates. These losses will continue to have innumerable impacts on species that depend on the delicate balance of life on Earth for their own survival.

“We tend to think about extinction as loss of a species from the face of Earth, and that’s very important, but there’s a loss of critical ecosystem functioning in which animals play a central role that we need to pay attention to as well,” said Rodolfo Dirzo, lead author of the study and a biology professor at Stanford University.

“Ironically, we have long considered that defaunation is a cryptic phenomenon, but I think we will end up with a situation that is non-cryptic because of the increasingly obvious consequences to the planet and to human wellbeing.”

The “Anthropocene defaunation,” as some researchers have dubbed this era, is hitting large animals such as elephants, polar bears, and rhinoceroses the hardest, as these megafauna are the subject of some of the highest rates of decline on Earth. This trend matches previous mass die-offs of the Big Five extinction periods.

Megafauna usually have lower population growth rates that need larger habitat areas to maintain their populations, thus they are particularly affected by human growth and desire for their meat mass. Losses among these animals often mean dire impacts for other species that depend on them within an ecosystem.

Past studies have found that the loss of larger animals means a spike in rodents, as grass and shrubs proliferate and soil compaction decreases, all while the risk of predation also declines, Futurity.org notes. As rodent populations increase, so do the disease-transporting ectoparasites that come with them.

“Where human density is high, you get high rates of defaunation, high incidence of rodents, and thus high levels of pathogens, which increases the risks of disease transmission,” said Dirzo.

“Who would have thought that just defaunation would have all these dramatic consequences? But it can be a vicious circle.”

About 16 to 33 percent of all vertebrate species are considered threatened or endangered, the review found.

Invertebrate loss also has far-reaching ripple effects on other species. For example, the continued disappearance of vital honeybee populations across the globe will have bleak consequences for plant pollination, and thus on the world’s food production, as RT has previously reported.

Insects pollinate about 75 percent of the world’s food crops, according to Futurity.

Overall, of the world’s more than 71,000 species, 30 percent of them are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Based on this assessment – and without drastic economic and political measures to address the current die-off – the sixth mass extinction could be cemented by 2400 A.D., University of California, Berkeley geologist Anthony Barnosky told Harper’s magazine.

Solutions to the die-off are complicated, the study posits, as reducing rates of habitat change and overexploitation of lands must come through regional and situational strategies.

“Prevention of further declines will require us to better understand what species are winning and losing in the fight for survival and from studying the winners, apply what we learn to improve conservation projects,” said Ben Collen, a lecturer at the University College of London and a co-author of the study.“We also need to develop predictive tools for modelling the impact of changes to the ecosystem so we can prioritize conservation efforts, working with governments globally to create supportive policy to reverse the worrying trends we are seeing.”

Researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara; Universidade Estadual Paulista in Brazil; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in England; and University College London are coauthors of the new study.

Lions ‘facing extinction in West Africa’

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A lion cub in Nigeria
This lion cub was photographed by researchers in Nigeria

There has been a “catastrophic collapse” in the number of lions in West Africa, with only around 400 left in the region, a new survey suggests.

With fewer than 250 mature lions of breeding age, there are concerns the entire population could disappear.

The research by Panthera, a non-profit organisation, was carried out in 17 countries, from Senegal to Nigeria, and took more than six years.

West African lions are genetically distinct from others in Africa.

In 2005, West African lions were believed to live in 21 different protected areas. But the survey, published in the scientific journal PLOS One, suggests lions now exist in just four of those sites.

The report says lions now roam in just 1.1% of their historic range in West Africa. The majority of their habitat has been converted for agricultural use, says Philipp Henschel, co-author of the report.

map

Panthera is calling for the lion to be listed as critically endangered in West Africa.

“Our results came as a complete shock; all but a few of the areas we surveyed were basically paper parks, having neither management budgets nor patrol staff, and had lost all their lions and other iconic large mammals,” Mr Henschel told the BBC’s Sivaramakrishnan Parameswaran.

The conservation of lions in West Africa have been largely neglected, whereas in eastern and southern Africa where millions of dollars a year are spent, he said.

Lion in Senegal
This lion was photographed by researchers in Senegal

Bush meat problem

The researchers discovered that West African lions now survive in only five countries; Senegal, Nigeria and a single trans-frontier population on the shared borders of Benin, Niger and Burkina-Faso.

These lions have unique genetic sequence not found in other lions including in zoos or captivity. If they are lost then a unique locally adapted population will become extinct, researchers say.

Large-scale plantations for cotton and food crops have contributed significantly to the decline of the lions in the last decade, the survey found.

Poached antelope in Ivory Coast Researchers found meat from poached antelope in Ivory Coast

Today, lions are largely restricted to protected areas, and the poaching of animals – usually preyed upon by lions – to supply local bushmeat markets is probably the main threat, said Mr Henschel.

“In some areas, we also witnessed the retaliatory killing of lions by herdsmen that entered protected areas illegally with their herds of cattle and goats,” he said.

Funding crisis

A lack of funding for conservation coupled with an increasing human population and impoverished economies, means lions are increasingly vulnerable, researchers say.

“We are talking about some of the poorest counties in the world – many governments have bigger problems than protecting lions,” Mr Henschel said.

Rangers training in Yankari in Nigeria
Wildlife rangers are being trained in Nigeria

West African Lions have special significance in the culture of the region. They are a symbol of pride for the governments and people, and are represented on the coats of arms of several countries.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says concerted international help is urgently needed.

Benin and Senegal are working with the research team to establish a National Lion Action Plan to identify ways and measures to save the lions in their countries.

“Lions have undergone a catastrophic collapse in West Africa. The countries that have managed to retain them are struggling with pervasive poverty and very little funding for conservation,” says Panthera’s President Luke Hunter.

To save the lion will require a massive commitment of resources from the international community.”

Dino impact ‘also destroyed bees’

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Scientists say there was a widespread extinction of bees 66 million years ago, at the same time as the event that killed off the dinosaurs.

Carpenter bee Sandra Rehan, University of New Hampshire

The demise of the dinosaurs was almost certainly the result of an asteroid or comet hitting Earth.

But the extinction event was selective, affecting some groups more than others.

Writing in Plos One journal, the team used fossils and DNA analysis to show that one bee group suffered a serious decline at the time of this collision.

The researchers chose to study bees within the subfamily known as Xylocopinae – which included the carpenter bees.

This was because the evolutionary history of this group could be traced back to the Cretaceous Period, when the dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

Previous studies had suggested a widespread extinction among flowering plants during the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event 66 million years ago.

And it had long been assumed that the bees that depended upon these plants would have met the same fate.

Yet, unlike the dinosaurs, “there is a relatively poor fossil record of bees,” said the paper’s lead author Sandra Rehan, a biologist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, US. This has made the confirmation of such an extinction difficult.

Post K-T impact
The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs created opportunities for other animals

However, the researchers were able to use an extinct group of Xylocopinae as a calibration point for timing the dispersal of these bees.

They were also able to study flower fossils that had evolved traits that allowed them to be pollinated by bee relatives of the Xylocopinae.

“The data told us something major was happening in four different groups of bees at the same time,” said Dr Rehan.

“And it happened to be the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct.”

The findings of this study could have implications for today’s concern about the loss in diversity of bees, a pivotal species for agriculture and biodiversity.

“Understanding extinctions and the effects of declines in the past can help us understand the pollinator decline and the global crisis in pollinators today,” Dr Rehan explained.

Fighting Extinction with Stem Cells

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Northern White Rhino
Photo courtesy of the San Diego Zoo

Angalifu and Nola spend their days roaming through a 213-acre habitat modeled on the African savannah. These two-ton white rhinoceros are a couple of the only eight known Northern White Rhinos left on the planet.

Conservation efforts have traditionally focused on protecting habitat and outlawing poaching to save endangered species. Now conservationists are adding a new tool to their repertoire: stem cells.

“These beautiful animals are on the brink,” said Oliver Ryder, the chief geneticist at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. “There are a few left, but it’s not clear they’re capable of reproducing.”

Ryder has teamed up with Scripps Research’s Jeanne Loring, a world-renowned stem cell researcher, to try to save the rhinos and other endangered species using some of the same stem cell breakthroughs that might one day treat disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in humans.

The team is using materials from Ryder’s Frozen Zoo, a lab where skin cells and DNA from 12 white rhinos and more than 8,000 other animals are stored at -280F. The Zoo has been collecting cell cultures from exotic animals since the 1970’s, in the hope that someday the cells could be used in some way to rescue endangered species.

This winter, Inbar Friedrich Ben-Nun, a postdoctoral researcher in Loring’s lab, used tissue from the Frozen Zoo to create stem cells from the silver-maned drill, Africa’s most endangered primate. She did it using a new method that reprograms adult cells, causing them to behave like embryonic stem cells, which can form all of the cell types in the body.

In humans, the method could potentially be used to replace damaged tissue or organs. In endangered species, researchers are hoping to use the cells to improve the health of existing animals, and perhaps someday to take it a step further and use them to rescue the waning animal populations by cloning them.

On June 1, the new stem cells morphed into brain cells.

“We were very excited to know that the drill stem cells could generate nerve cells,” Loring said, “but we know that there is still a lot of work to be done.”

The San Diego Zoo has been involved with efforts to clone endangered species in the past. But the older and more common methods of cloning, like those used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996, are extremely inefficient.

That’s why Loring’s accomplishment is especially exciting.

A few researchers elsewhere have toyed with the idea of resurrecting long-dead animals like the wooly mammoth, but the San Diego group has other priorities.

“We focus on reducing the risk of extinction for species that are here now,” Ryder said. The clock is ticking: Rhinos don’t usually live past 50, and Angalifu is nearing 40.