Five bird species not seen in the wild for between 11 and 20 years were documented in 2025, cutting the global lost birds list from 163 to 1
From the article:
In February 2026, two French birders in Chad photographed a rusty bush lark. The species had not been recorded in 94 years. It was the most dramatic entry in a year of rediscoveries that have brought the Lost Birds List from 163 species down to 120 since 2022.
The list tracks birds not photographed, recorded, or genetically detected for at least a decade. It is maintained by the Search for Lost Birds project, a partnership between the American Bird Conservancy, Re:wild, and BirdLife International. John Mittermeier, the project’s director, describes it as an “early warning system” for species that might “potentially slip between the cracks” of slower, more formal conservation assessments.
All five 2025 rediscoveries came from Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and all were made by individual birders and photographers, not formal research teams.
Dr. Sallon and her team thought it was an extinct species known from history as Judean Balsam, but it turned out to be something called Tsor
"During an archaeological dig in a desert area north of Jerusalem 40 years ago, a seed was discovered which was determined to be in pristine condition but had obviously seen many a year.
Now, despite falling from its parent 1,000 years ago, it has grown into a mature tree, and botanists examining it believe it may be an extinct species that was used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years—even receiving a nod in the Bible.
Neither Israeli botanists, nor Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician who founded the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, could determine what species it was from simply from the seed covering. So they did what nature intended—they planted it.
Using a well-documented technique that saw 2,000-year-old date palm fruit pits germinate, Dr. Sallon soaked the seed in hormones, liquid fertilizer, and water, and then planted it in a pot of sterile seed; then waited.
Despite its genetic code being exposed to environmental stressors for over 1,000 years, the seed sprouted after 5 weeks. The shoot was protected by a caplike feature called an operculum. As the shoot grew, the operculum was shed—leaving something for the team to radiocarbon date. It narrowed down the age of the almost 10-centuries-old seed to between the years 993 an 1202.
Fast forward 14 years and the plant has become a 10-foot-tall tree. Dr. Sallon shared images of the tree, its bark, and its leaves with botanists around the world. One expert suggested it belonged to the genus Commiphora, found across the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa. A genetic analysis subsequently revealed this was the case, but a perfect match was lacking.
Pictured: The tree, now 14 years old.
Dr. Sallon and her team thought it was an extinct species known from history as Judean Balsam, but the best way to confirm that suspicion would be to have some aromatic traces similar to the resins of the myrrh tree to which it is related. However, no such fragrant compounds were detected.
Instead, the chemical analysis of the leaves identified a group of phytochemicals known as guggulterols which have been observed in a related species called Commiphora wightii that’s known to possess certain cancer-fighting properties in its resin.
A medicinal balm, the origin of which is not known, is mentioned in multiple historical texts including the Bible as ‘tsori,’ and rather than the fragrant Judean Balsam, it’s this tsori that Dr. Sallon and her team believe they have found.
They must wait until the tree, now 14 years old, produces flower or fruit to know for sure if it’s an extinct species, and if so, how to perhaps keep it alive.
Dr. Louise Colville, senior research leader in seed and stress biology at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London who wasn’t involved in the research, told CNN that it was a major accomplishment to grow a seed that old and possibly lead to a resurrection of this Biblical botanical.
“What’s surprising in this story is it was just a single seed and to be able to have one chance for that to germinate is extremely lucky,” she said.
“Working in a seed bank, seeing the potential for that extreme longevity gives us hope that banking and storing seeds that some at least will survive for very long periods of time.”"
-via Good News Network, October 8, 2024
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Note: This is such a good demonstration of why seed banks are so important!! They give us such real and massive hope for deextinction and the revival of endangered species.
Our fossil is a rare new witness. It comes from roughly 80-million-year-old rock in São Paulo state, Brazil. We named it Tametara mirim, meaning “adorned” and “small” in the local Indigenous language.
(Photo: Agustin Martinelli)
The new fossil of Tametara mirim reframes how we understand snake evolution.
(Photo: Agustin Martinelli)
Life reconstruction of the burrowing stem snake Tametara mirim which lived alongside now-extinct stem-birds and sauropod dinosaurs.
(Illustration: Gabriel Ugueto)
The bones of Tametara show it had the skull of a burrower. CT scan volume-rendered with VGSTUDIO MAX.
(Image: Roy Ebel)
One theory about how snakes evolved suggests lizards went underground, lost their limbs and elongated their bodies.
(Illustration supplied - Roy Ebel)
80‑million‑year‑old snake fossil sheds light on why lizards lost their limbs and started slithering
Snakes are everywhere in our legends and mythology. Yet for most of us, our blood runs cold whenever we encounter these strangely undulating, scaly tubes of muscle slithering through the leaf litter.
The loss of an arm or leg poses a challenge. Yet snakes do perfectly well without all four of them. This makes them suspect. It also leaves us unable to fathom how this radical transition produced one of the most successful vertebrate body plans.
More than 4,000 species of snakes are alive today, on every continent except Antarctica, from thread-thin burrowers to massive pythons, on land and in the sea. We have studied them since antiquity, and still the oldest question about them has no answer: what turned snakes into snakes?
We have long suspected their peculiar, limbless body plan is explained by how the earliest snakes lived. In a new study, published today in Nature, my colleagues and I describe a small, exquisitely preserved fossil that brings us closer to an answer than ever before.
By Roy Ebel
Research Officer Herpetology, Museums Victoria Research Institute, Australia
The Conversation - July 23, 2026
Snakes lost their limbs millions of years ago to become undulating, scaly tubes of muscles. Scientists are finally figuring out why.
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Fig. 1: Holotype (MPM 420) of T. mirim.
a, Photograph of the whole specimen with the articulated skull and postcranium in dorsal view. Ant, anterior; Bl, block number; Ce.V., cervical vertebrae; Do.V., dorsal vertebrae; Post, posterior; Sk, skull. b,c, Photographs of the skull in lateral (b) and dorsal (c) view. CB, compound bone; F, frontal; Oto, otoccipital; P, parietal; PFr, postfrontal; Pro, prootic; Ptg, pterygoid; Q, quadrate; Soc, supraoccipital; St, supratemporal. d–g, 3D renderings of an anterior precloacal (‘cervical’) vertebra in lateral (d) and anterolateral (e) views, and mid-precloacal (‘dorsal’) vertebra in dorsal (f) and left lateral (g) views. h–j, 3D renderings of the skull in the right lateral view (h) and with exposed brain endocasts in the right lateral (i) and dorsal (j) views. Mes., mesencephalon; Rho., rhombencephalon; Tel., telencephalon. Scale bars, 100 mm (a), 5 mm (b,c,h–j) and 1 mm (d–g). Specimen photos were taken by A.S.H.
Exceptional brain and ecological diversity in the earliest snakes
Understanding the ecological origin of snakes has remained a century-old challenge, hindered by an extremely sparse early fossil record and conflicting interpretations of fossil ecologies.
Here we describe an exceptionally preserved Cretaceous fossil snake, Tametara mirim gen. et sp. nov., from Brazil, representing one of the earliest-diverging stem snakes. High-resolution micro-CT scans reveal unprecedented details of cranial nerves, inner ear and brain anatomy, enabling the most integrated reconstruction of stem snake neuroanatomy to date. Quantitative and qualitative endocast analyses demonstrate that Tametara had a brain morphology distinct from both other stem and extant snakes, revealing substantial early neuroanatomical disparity — and probably sensory functions — in snake evolution. Independent evidence from telencephalon shape and bone microstructure converges on a fossorial lifestyle for Tametara and non-fossorial for another stem snake: Dinilysia.
These results indicate that major ecological transitions occurred early in snake evolution, and that known stem species do not represent the ancestral condition of crown snakes. Early snake evolution thus involved complex shifts in habitat use and sensory ecology, revealing greater ecological and neuroanatomical diversity than previously thought.
By Tiago R. Simões, Gabriela Sobral, Simone Macri, Roy Ebel, Thiago S. Fachini, Augustin G. Martinelli, William R. Nava, Giovanna M. X. Paixão, Luis M. Chiappe, Nicolas Di-Poï & Annie S. Hsiou
Nature - 22 July 2026
A well-preserved fossil snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil shows early ecological and brain shape disparity in the group.
The passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in north america. the band tailed pigeon is its closest living relative. attempts have been made to instill band tailed with passenger dna, in an endeavor to create a hybrid bird to fulfill its ecological niche. this comic is only somewhat about that resurrection.
