For months, Juliette’s PhD research existed mostly on paper. Then she got on a boat. Her first field trip brought low tides, unpredictable weather, disappearing dolphins and plenty of lessons in adapting when research plans meet reality. Somewhere between the seagrass, common dolphins, fur seal and her elusive study species, something exciting happened: she came home with her first dataset, and her PhD research finally felt real.

Rextinct is a new R package that estimates extinction dates using radiocarbon-dated fossils. It implements CRIWM, a method that accounts for gaps in the fossil record and dating uncertainty. Unlike older tools, it doesn’t assume fossil ages are evenly spread or errors are normally distributed, making it more accurate and flexible. Rextinct helps scientists track when species disappeared—and understand why.