Our latest article on Taranaki fossils is out: Close relatives of emperor penguins lived in NZ some 3 million years ago. What caused their extinction? theconversation.com/close-relati...

Celebrities and venture capitalists throw millions at a company claiming it can breed fake dodos, which seems especially cruel given the dodo’s living relative., the Samoan tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, is on the brink of extinction for lack of money. news.mongabay.com/2025/09/fund...

There's a great Substack piece by Adam Rutherford debunking all this nonsense. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

The scientists who are on Colossal's SAB really, *really* need to re-think what they are doing there and whether they want their names associated with this project.

Large penguin from the Tangahoe Formation (Pliocene of New Zealand), a member of the same genus as extant king and emperor penguins: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 🧪🪶 (📷 @atennyson.bsky.social et al.)

A new study warns that Macaronesia has suffered heavy biodiversity losses, revealing each extinct species including 27 birds:

Nice to see my opinion piece on moa 'de-extinction' published in the latest issue of the @birdsnewzealand.bsky.social magazine. Thanks to those who helped give this article wings...you know who you are.

This great YouTube video about the #ColossalBio Red Wolf #DisInformation; tldr, they didn't clone red wolves, they cloned a coyotes... youtu.be/V9fLpgZ09EI?...

You can check out the full trilogy of satirical cartoons about moa 'de-extinction' in the Otago Daily Times here.

Here's the final satirical cartoon on moa de-extinction in this weekend's Otago Daily Times.

Otago researchers have discovered another unique species from Rēkohu Chatham Islands.🦆🏝️ After 390,000 years on a predator-free island, the now-extinct Rēkohu shelduck evolved shorter wings and longer legs. Read more here🔗:

Welcome to the world Rēkohu shelduck. You can check out our #openaccess paper about this new extinct duck from the Chatham Islands here (academic.oup.com/.../article/...) & make sure to read our @aunz.theconversation.com piece theconversation.com/the-discover... 1/4

This is a good time to remember that Moas, Emus, and the other ratites diverged so long ago, they FLEW to different continents, and then lost the ability to fly and became giants independently. You can't just sprinkle a few variants to make one into the other. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Q: is it more concerning if 🐺 this is deliberate PR, with all involved knowing they haven't 'de-extincted' the dire wolf, but will say so (and double down) to further their wider mission, or 🐺 the science team actually thinks that 20 changes to 14 genome locations = dire wolf de-extinction...?

"This will be a new creature, not an animal with native roots in New Zealand. This makes it yet another introduced species like the rat or stoat, with unpredictable behavior." An excellent take down of the moa de-extinction nonsense.

You’ll all have seen the many announcements and PR pieces from #ColossalBiosciences. There are reasons to be concerned about the general message promoted by CB, one being that it is seen >by some< (US politicians in particular) as meaning that we can devalue conservation. A 🧵 1/n

Updated a broken link in my substack post about the #ColossalBio #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign – dire wolves are still extinct. open.substack.com/pub/devoevom...