World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.…

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Dinosaur data: can the bones of the deep past help predict extinctions of the future?

In Chicago’s Field Museum, behind a series of access-controlled doors, are about 1,500 dinosaur fossil specimens. The palaeobiologist Jasmina Wiemann walks straight past the bleached…

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A very British butterfly: spectacular swallowtail is built for capricious summers

The swallowtail is Britain’s largest and most spectacular butterfly. Most British butterflies are adapted to surviving gruelling, cold, wet, capricious summers, which is why many…

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UN names veteran EU official Astrid Schomaker as new biodiversity chief

The next UN biodiversity chief will be Astrid Schomaker, an EU civil servant who will be entrusted with helping the world confront the ongoing catastrophic…

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‘Enormously exciting’: farm to create biggest natural grassland in southern England

The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep. In…

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