The heat is on for the 'living fossil'

The Chinese Sturgeon has been around for 140 million years, but economic development may soon result in China's rarest native species disappearing for good, report Liu Kun in Wuhan and Wang Qian in Beijing.

Having spent more than three decades researching and protecting the wild Chinese sturgeon, Wei Qiwei can't stop worrying that this rare, ancient fish may become extinct in the coming decades.

In the past two years, researchers have discovered no evidence of natural reproductive activity in the Yangtze River for the first time since the species was first recorded in the 1980s, according to Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.