World’s largest bats on the verge of extinction in Peninsular Malaysia due to hunting

October 5th, 2009 SYDNEY - A new study has determined that the world's worst mass extinction 250 million years ago was the trigger for a fungus explosion, which puts to rest the idea that an asteroid impact may have had a hand in the massive destruction. When the worldwide extinction took place, lush forests lay in ruins all across the supercontinent Pangea.

September 30th, 2009 LONDON - Reports indicate that the giant Chinese paddlefish, which is one of the world's largest freshwater fish, is on the verge of going extinct. According to a report by BBC News, a three-year quest to find the giant Chinese paddlefish in the Yangtze river failed to sight or catch a single individual.

September 11th, 2009 LONDON - A new research has warned that polar bears face extinction in less than 70 years because of global warming. "Recent projections suggest polar bears could be extinct within 70 years," Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led the latest study, told the Telegraph.

August 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - It's not just humans who sing love ballads to woo their partners, for bats too sing when they indulge in sex, according to a new study. Researchers at Texas A and M University and the University of Texas at Austin are believed to be the first to decode the mysterious love sounds made by the winged creatures.

August 15th, 2009 LONDON - In a new research, scientists have discovered that the oddly-shaped skulls of the wrinkle-faced bat include jaws that are more powerful than not just other fruit bats but also much larger predatory bats, which need to be able to sink their teeth into tough hides. With a strangely naked face covered in skin flaps and a wide, foreshortened skull, the head of the rarely seen, fruit-eating, wrinkle-faced bat (has been an enigma to biologists for a long time.

August 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new fossil-bat discovery has revealed that a walking bat in New Zealand took its marching orders from a 20-mln-yr-old ancestor, which upends a theory that the lesser short-tailed bat evolved its walking preference independently. Since the bat's native habitat lacks predators, researchers reasoned that-much like flightless birds on isolated islands-the bat had adapted to its safer surroundings in part by walking.

August 7th, 2009 LONDON - The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has found its first extrasolar planets, in the form of three alien worlds that had been previously discovered with ground-based telescopes. According to a report in New Scientist, the finds confirm that Kepler's instruments are sensitive enough to detect Earth-like planets around sun-like stars.

July 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has found that a bizarre New Zealand bat that is as much at home walking four-legged on the ground as winging through the air had an Australian ancestor 20 million years ago with the same rare ability. The study was carried out by an international team of researchers led by Dr Suzanne Hand, a bat expert at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, s team of scientists has detected cones and their visual pigments in two flower-visiting species of bat, which has lead them to conclude that bats' eyes are adapted for both daylight and UV (Ultraviolet) vision. The research was conducted by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and the University of Oldenburg, in Germany.

July 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has found out that moths can use ultrasound blasts to disrupt sonar from predatory bats, thus evading detection by the flying mammals. Bats emit high-pitched cries, then listen as the sound waves bounce off nearby objects-allowing the bats to find and eat tiny insects in the dark, among other things.

June 23rd, 2009 LONDON - A team of scientists has analyzed the fossil of the extinct giant kangaroo to determine that humans were responsible for the demise of "megafauna" 46,000 years ago. There has long been dissent in the palaeontology community about the cause for extinctions worldwide after the end of the last ice age.

June 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has finally proven that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence that woolly mammoths survived in Britain until 14,000 years ago. The mammoth bones, consisting of one largely complete adult male and at least four juveniles, were first excavated in 1986, but the carbon dating which took place at the time has since been considered inaccurate.

June 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Bats use echolocation not only to navigate their surroundings also to recognize each other, a study has found. The study, by researchers at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and the University of Applied Sciences in Konstanz, Germany, explains how bats use echolocation for more than just spatial knowledge.

June 5th, 2009 LONDON - Bats can recognise one another by the nature of their sounds, says a new study carried out in Germany. The study, conducted by the University of Tubingen, explains how bats use echolocation for more than just finding out where they are.

April 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New scientific evidence suggests that dinosaur bones from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin, USA, date from after the mass extinction event, and that dinos may have survived in a remote area of what is now New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years, in a scenario resembling that of the fictional 'Lost World'. This controversial new research, is based on detailed chemical investigations of the dinosaur bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found.