Inside the Frozen Zoo, where scientists put disappearing species on ice: ‘It’s banking hope’

At a San Diego laboratory, four women do the painstaking work of preserving cells amid a growing extinction crisis

In a basement laboratory abutting an 1,800-acre wildlife park in San Diego, California, Marlys Houck looks up to see a uniformed man holding a blue insulated lunch bag filled with small pieces of eyes, trachea, feet and feathers.

Ah," she says, softly. Here are today's samples."