The survival prospects of the humpback whale are looking more promising as a result of a 40-year hunting ban. Whether the moratorium stays in place remains to be seen though. Four decades after their hunting was banned in 1966, the humpback whale seems to have finally swum clear of the danger zone. On the newest compilation of the Red List of Threatened Species, humpbacks are no longer classed ... Read full entry

An evolutionary supertree featuring 440 of the 600 known species of dinosaurs, shows how dinosaur evolution, which surged during their first 50 million years, virtually came to a stand still during the Cretaceous period. It remained at that low level throughout the following Cretaceous period, a time of plenty in Earth's terrestrial history in which flowering plants, lizards, snakes, birds and mammals all became much more numerous. Dinosaurs ... Read full entry

Did Insects Kill the Dinosaurs? Is it possible that creepy crawlies and insects, rather than an ice age, or a meteor hitting the planet, were in fact responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs? The authors aren't arguing that the dinos all died in a massive epidemic; rather, the constant wear and tear of illness weakened the dinosaurs so that other catastrophes, like comets and volcanoes, could have finished them off. ... Read full entry