Before the early 1900s, if it walked like a Christmas Island rat and talked like a Christmas Island rat, it probably was a Christmas Island rat. But if one of these now-extinct rats ever walks the ...

A team of scientists recently modeled the likelihood of hauling a species back from dead, using the Christmas Island rat, a large rodent that went extinct between 1902 and 1908, as their hypothetical ...

Scientists have recreated the genome of the Christmas Island rat, which went extinct more than 100 years ago. But about 5% of the rat's genetic makeup could not be recreated, which means if the animal ...

A Texas rodent threatened by habitat loss may be one step closer to receiving protections under the Endangered Species Act. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the Texas ...

David Kuchta, Ph.D. has 10 years of experience in gardening and has read widely in environmental history and the energy transition. An environmental activist since the 1970s, he is also a historian, ...

If Tom Gilbert could bring any extinct animal back to life, he said, it wouldn't be dinosaurs or woolly mammoths or any other megafauna that once roamed the planet. His is a humbler choice: the ...

A gigantic and elusive species of rat, known as the subalpine woolly rat (Mallomys istapantap), has been photographed and documented in the wild for the very first time. This discovery comes nearly ...

New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe -- revealing that the rodent colonized the continent on two occasions in the ...

When California declared the San Bernardino kangaroo rat an endangered species recently, conservationists rejoiced. The state designation seemed to promise stronger protections for the tiny, ...