Why Did The Passenger Pigeon Go Extinct? The Answer Might Lie In Their Toes
Billions of these birds once flew over North America, but the last known passenger pigeon died in 1914. To try to figure out what happened, scientists analyzed DNA from the toes of birds in museums.
Scientists believe they may have new insights into why passenger pigeons went extinct, after analyzing DNA from the toes of birds that have been carefully preserved in museums for over a century.
"We were hoping that we could get to the bottom of why they went extinct so quickly â why it was that this giant population of birds suddenly became extinct, entirely extinct, over the course of just a couple of decades," explains of the University of California, Santa Cruz, one of the researchers on in the journal
