Tiger

For decades, wildlife biologists have dreamt of a "smart" camera alerting system capable of detecting tigers and other endangered species on the prowl. Legacy camera-trap technology, while valuable for many research applications, has historically been hindered by false positives and an inability to facilitate rapid responses.

A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time.

The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human actions are wiping out vertebrate animal species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise disappear.

A neutron star is 2 solar masses compressed into a ball only 12 kilometers wide. Its surface gravity is so immense it compresses atoms and molecules into raw nuclei and squeezes electrons into protons transforming them into neutrons. Given such immense pressures and densities, you might assume neutron stars have an almost perfectly smooth surface. But you'd be wrong because we know that neutron stars can have mountains.

After killing seven people in the past five years, sharks are enemy number one in France's Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia where the authorities have declared open season on the species in the hope of making beaches safe again.