Green Options

The International Union for Conservation of Nature surveyed 47,677 of animal and plant species this year, ultimately listing 17,291 of the count under Red’s List of endangered species.

The Switzerland-based environmental group conducts a yearly examination of plant and animal species and 2009’s list topped last year’s by 2,800. However, the group admitted that the list is incomplete, and there remain millions of other specimens yet to be surveyed.

The Yangtze Soft-Shell Turtle, or Swinhoe’s Turtle, is the rarest animal in the world. The survival of the species hangs entirely on the tender shell of its only known living female, which is set to mate this May.

Scientists are hoping that Spring fever is still in the air for the 80-year-old turtle and her 100-year-old male companion, who together make up the last two captive specimens on the planet. The geriatric couple was united last year in an attempt to breed the pair, but none of the fertilized eggs were able to hatch, most likely due to a calcium deficiency in her diet.

If the elderly turtles don’t have a successful mating this year, it may spell the end of a species.

The current rate of extinction is 100 to 1000 times higher than the average, or background rate, making our current period the 6th major mass extinction in the planet’s history.

Although fossil reconstructions or pictorial representations can sometimes be difficult to connect with, it’s impossible to ignore the experience of seeing a photograph of an animal on the brink of extinction.

Thus, what follows is a list of 11 extinct animals that were photographed while still alive.

Tasmanian Tiger

Eight years after starting their efforts, scientists in India still believe they will be able to resurrect the long-extinct Indian Cheetah if they can acquire the cell line of the closely related Asiatic Cheetah, which lives in Iran.

“If a cell line made from the Cheetah was available, it would have been possible to resurrect the species,” said S. Shivaji, a scientist at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.It seems there are at present a few Cheetahs in Iran. If tissue or cell samples could be procured from Iran it should be possible to clone the Cheetah using Leopard as a surrogate mother.”

But should species that have already gone extinct be brought back through cloning?

It’s not quite on the scale of Jurassic Park, but Japanese researchers claim that they have successfully produced clones of mice that have been frozen for 16 years.

Will this research help revive extinct animals like the woolly mammoth or saber-toothed tiger?

The findings of this fascinating study were published this week in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences. So without further ado, here’s how they brought the long dead mice back to life.