Tag: Extinction
In Earth’s largest extinction, land die-offs began long before ocean turnover
The mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago—one of the great turnovers of life on Earth—appears to have...
One single primitive turtle resisted mass extinction in the northern hemisphere
Sixty-six million years ago, in the emerged lands of Laurasia—now the northern hemisphere—a primitive land tortoise, measuring about 60 cm, managed to survive the...
Mystery solved: Ocean acidity in the last mass extinction
A new study led by Yale University confirms a long-held theory about the last great mass extinction event in history and how it affected...
Ancient die-off greater than the dinosaur extinction
Clues from Canadian rocks formed billions of year ago reveal a previously unknown loss of life even greater than that of the mass extinction...
New evidence suggests volcanoes caused biggest mass extinction ever
Biggest Mass Extinction
Researchers say mercury buried in ancient rock provides the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes caused the biggest mass extinction in the history...
Evolution imposes ‘speed limit’ on recovery after mass extinctions
It takes at least 10 million years for life to fully recover after a mass extinction, a speed limit for the recovery of species...
In ancient oceans that resembled our own, oxygen loss triggered mass...
Roughly 430 million years ago, during the Earth's Silurian Period, global oceans were experiencing changes that would seem eerily familiar today. Melting polar ice...
Researchers uncover new clues to surviving extinction
Scientists are peeking into ancient oceans to unravel the complexities of mass extinctions, past and future. A new examination of Earth's largest extinction by...
Earth’s largest extinction event likely took plants first
Little life could endure the Earth-spanning cataclysm known as the Great Dying, but plants may have suffered its wrath long before many animal counterparts,...
Biggest mass extinction caused by global warming leaving ocean animals gasping...
This illustration shows the percentage of marine animals that went extinct at the end of the Permian era by latitude, from...
Human ancestors not to blame for ancient mammal extinctions in Africa
New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several...
Rare fossil bird deepens mystery of avian extinctions
During the late Cretaceous period, more than 65 million years ago, birds belonging to hundreds of different species flitted around the dinosaurs and through...
Mammals cannot evolve fast enough to escape current extinction crisis
We humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature's built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated...
The walking dead: Fossils on the move can distort patterns of...
Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and a new study highlights...
Geologists uncover new clues about largest mass extinction ever
A new study could help explain the driving force behind the largest mass extinction in the history of earth, known as the End-Permian Extinction.
The...
What caused the mass extinction of Earth’s first animals?
Fossil records tell us that the first macroscopic animals appeared on Earth about 575 million years ago. Twenty-four million years later, the diversity of...
Scientists Understand the Role of Sexual Selection in Extinction
The lengths that some males go to attract a mate can pay off in the short-term. But according to a new study from scientists...
When it comes to extinction, body size matters
On a certain level, extinction is all about energy. Animals move over their surroundings like pacmen, chomping up resources to fuel their survival. If...
Rainforest collapse 307 million years ago impacted the evolution of early...
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have discovered that the mass extinction seen in plant species caused by the onset of a drier climate...
Past mass extinctions could help scientists prevent the next one
Black rhinos, red wolves, whooping cranes: the global list of endangered species grows every year to the point where some researchers say we're witnessing...
