It’s a question so obvious a schoolchild can ask it, but for more than a century, consensus has eluded the paleontologists and evolutionary biologists who study the reptiles and their bony carapaces. Now, a group of scientists at Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution argue that a reptile fossil that’s been gathering dust in museum collections is actually a turtle ancestor, and that its reduced number of ribs, distribution of muscles, and T-shaped ribs could help settle the question once and for all.

In a new paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, they unveil the argument that a 260 million-year-old creature called Eunotosaurus africanus was a turtle ancestor, hoping to help resolve a debate that has split the scientific community for decades.

Scientists at the Vancouver Aquarium have sprung into action, as part of an effort to prevent an endangered frog population from becoming extinct in eastern British Columbia.

The Rocky Mountain population of northern leopard frogs plummeted by the millions in the 1970s, and only two populations are now known to exist near Creston, in B.C.’s West Kootenay region.

The aquarium announced Thursday its scientists have, for the first time in Canada, bred the species in an aquarium setting and created an assurance — or backup — population.

Dennis Thoney, the aquarium’s director of animal operations, said officials plan to release about 2,000 tadpoles Monday in the Columbia Marshes near the east Kootenay city of Cranbrook, while maintaining a population at the aquarium.

The roughly 6-pound, foot-long animal nicknamed “Charley” was first located by a fisherman who spotted it floating in a patch of weeds 22 miles off of the Middle Keys.

Upon examination veterinarians discovered that Charley had ingested a small piece of plastic, causing its digestive system to become impacted.

Richie Maroetti, Turtle Hospital founder and director, said in a statement that turtles sometimes confuse plastic with one of their favorite food sources: jellyfish.

"It plugged up her bowel and she started to float," Moretti said. "We gave her some antibiotics and gave her a little Metamucil and she's just much better.”

Ultimately, however, Charley’s struggle is symptomatic of a much larger problem, Moretti warns.

"We just gotta keep plastic out of our ocean," he said.

An amazing glow-in-the-dark cockroach, a harp-shaped carnivorous sponge and the smallest vertebrate on Earth are just three of the newly discovered top 10 species selected by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. A global committee of taxonomists -- scientists responsible for species exploration and classification -- announced its list of top 10 species from 2012 today, May 23.

No to the Mine! Snake
Sibon noalamina
Country: Panama

Snail-eating snake: A beautiful new species of snail-eating snake has been discovered in the highland rainforests of western Panama. The snake is nocturnal and hunts soft-bodied prey including earthworms and amphibian eggs, in addition to snails and slugs. This harmless snake defends itself by mimicking the alternating dark and light rings of venomous coral snakes. The species is found in the Serranía de Tabasará mountain range where ore mining is degrading and diminishing its habitat. The species name is derived from the Spanish phrase "No a la mina" or "No to the mine."

World's Smallest Vertebrate
Paedophryne amanuensis
Country: New Guinea

Tiny frog: Living vertebrates -- animals that have a backbone or spinal column -- range in size from this tiny new species of frog, as small as 7 millimeters, to the blue whale, measuring 25.8 meters. The new frog was discovered near Amau village in Papua, New Guinea. It captures the title of 'smallest living vertebrate' from a tiny Southeast Asian cyprinid fish that claimed the record in 2006. The adult frog size, determined by averaging the lengths of both males and females, is only 7.7 millimeters. With few exceptions, this and other ultra-small frogs are associated with moist leaf litter in tropical wet forests -- suggesting a unique ecological guild that could not exist under drier circumstances.

Amphibians are suffering a "terrifying" rate of extinction say the researchers, making them the most threatened vertebrates in the world. The Mexican salamander or axolotl is being threatened by expanding cities, pollution and invasive fish species which eat their young.

While many of the survival issues facing species highlighted on the map are extremely challenging, sometimes small changes can make a big difference.

(Zoological Society of London Director of Conservation Jonathan) Baillie highlights the example of a small worm like amphibian from Kenya called the Sagalla caecilian.

"It was just losing its habitat because the native trees were taken, so we've started a programme of replanting the native trees and 6,000 have been replanted and the areas where they have their strongholds are now being protected."

"That kind of simple action can ensure that those species can be there hopefully for hundred of years to come."

Ichythyosaurs were dolphin-shaped swimming reptiles that gave birth to live young. They lived in the oceans at the same time dinosaurs were tromping around on land. Previously, researchers thought only one group of ichthyosaurs, called ophthalmosaurids, made it out of the Jurassic into the Cretaceous. The newly named fossil, dubbed Malawania anachronus, is a Cretaceous survivor that does not belong to the ophthalmosaurids, however. That means a "ghost lineage" of ichthyosaurs survived alongside the ophthalmosaurids, changing very little over millions of years.

The fossil in question was first found in the 1950s by British petroleum geologists, who noticed the slab being used as a stepping stone on a mule track in Iraq. The geologists rescued the fossil and took it to the United Kingdom, where it stayed unstudied until the 1970s. Because researchers didn't know where in the rock record the fossil had come from, they struggled to determine its age. (Layers of earth build up over time, meaning, in a general sense, the oldest layers will be on the bottom and the more recent layers more toward the surface.)

“It did a really huge number on an entire genus of frogs in Central America,” said Marm Kilpatrick, a disease ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). The fungus probably caused several species of this harlequin frog (Atelopus) to go extinct, he added.

Chytrid is also largely responsible for endangering California’s mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa).

"It's the single biggest threat to vertebrate diversity in the world," Kilpatrick said.

The fungus, which seems to attack only amphibians, causes a thickening of the infected amphibian’s skin, preventing the animal from breathing properly and interfering with its electrolyte balance. The infection can eventually lead to cardiac arrest, although some frog species are better able to cope with it than others.

A new study delving into how this fungus spreads has now linked chytrid outbreaks in California—one of the more recent areas experiencing huge amphibian die-offs—to the spread of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis).

And the study’s implications could extend far beyond California, providing scientists with a potential road map showing how a devastating infection continues to spread around the world.

Mayo, according to court documents, eventually confessed he'd brought the two-foot-long snake home with him, but said the other snakes on the plane belonged to others on the fire crew. Furthermore, he denied the claim that he had been told to release the snakes. And he revealed, according to the documents, "his snake had a baby in Fairbanks, but the young snake died.

"BLM agents took possession of the (mother) snake," leaving Mayo snakeless.

Then began the American-taxpayer-funded prosecution and defense of the out-of-work firefighter. Public defender Haden on Wednesday admitted she's been involved with few cases of less significance.

"I did have a client once who was charged with goose molestation on the (military) base," she said. "You can't pet a goose."

She also noted that "every case is significant to the person charged." There is no argument there. There is no telling what might have happened to Mayo without legal representation. He might have been headed for federal prison.

Lucky for him, Haden negotiated a plea deal with federal prosecutors, and Mayo is to be sentenced in Fairbanks on Friday.