Australia's Tasmanian tiger has been extinct for more than 80 years but scientists have taken a step closer to bringing the animal back to life. Stunning 3D scans were used to reconstruct the development of the animal through its early life, using persevered specimens of the species. Unlike other marsupials, like kangaroos and wallabies, Tasmanian tigers have dog-like features - despite last sharing a common ancestor around 160 million years ago. The new scans have revealed that these canine attributes appear once their young, called joeys, have left their mother's womb. The find could help to unlock the genetic mysteries of the iconic creatures, which will aid scientists who hope to clone them and bring them back from extinction.

There's a saying, in conservation biology, credited to the plant ecologist Frank Egler: Ecosystems are not just more complex than we think, they're more complex than we can think. With doomsday narratives swirling about nuclear war, the existential threat of artificial intelligence, and runaway global warming, it's one we might want to constantly bear in mind. We are deeply interconnected with myriad species disappearing from complex ecosystems--and we might be next. The end may not necessarily be "the end," though. In case an extinction event ever wipes us out we could theoretically (at some future point) program an artificial intelligence to survive the fallout and bring us back in a genetically similar form.