carlzimmer: Here is Martha, the last passenger pigeon. She died...

carlzimmer:

Here is Martha, the last passenger pigeon. She died in 1914 and is now stored at the Smithsonian. Could fragments of DNA from her cadaver—and those of other passenger pigeon—allow us to bring the species back from extinction? I look at the possibility of de-extinction in the April issue of National Geographic.

Photo by Robb Kendrick