Extinction forms a natural part of the cycle of life. Around 50 million species currently exist on our planet but scientific research has indicated that, since life evolved on Earth, between 1 and 4 billion species could have blossomed into being only to die out and ultimately become extinct.
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Scientists are trying to bring extinct species back from the dead. Will they recreate something dangerous?

In the March 19th edition of the New York Times, Gina Kolata quotes geneticist George Church as saying, "Maybe we can no longer delay death, but we can reverse it."

So far only one extinct species has been brought back: A goat-like creature that went extinct in 1999. In 2003, it was cloned from frozen cells, but it lived only a few minutes. Cloning needs an intact cell, which, in an extinct species, may not exist. If it works, the embryo must be implanted in a closely related species.
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African forest elephants are being poached out of existence. A new study with of largest dataset on forest elephants ever compiled reveals a loss of more than 60% in the past decade, due to slaughtering them for their ivory tusks. The decline is documented throughout forest elephant’s range in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Republic of Congo.

Distinct from the African savannah elephant, the African forest elephant is slightly smaller than its better known relative and is considered by many to be a separate species. They play a vital role in maintaining the biodiversity of one of the Earth’s critical carbon sequestering tropical forests.
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In the future, the wide variety of fish available in our grocery stores and fish markets may be only a memory. Commercial fishers are netting huge numbers of fish, while dams such as the Hoover, built along the Colorado River, have stopped freshwater from flowing into fish breeding grounds.

Salmon are not only losing their breeding grounds, copper particles in the ocean are affecting their sense of smell, leading to behavior changes such as not swimming upstream to spawn. These minute amounts of copper come from brake linings and mining operations that have been discarded in the ocean.
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