Credit: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance The once-abundant California condor briefly went extinct in the wild, with only 22 individuals living in captivity by 1982. Today, 300 condors live freely in the wild and another 200 are in captivity. But, despite the condor's struggles, a new study of the California condor genome reported in the journal Current Biology on May 13 has found a surprising amount of genetic diversity. The study is the first to begin quantifying diversity across the entire California condor genome, which offers researchers needed baseline information to inform future research and conservation of this iconic species, the largest species of land bird in North America. The researchers say that the quality of their genome assembly is among the highest for any bird genome sequenced to date.