Scientists Zero In on the Role Volcanoes Played in the Demise of Dinosaurs
Graduate Center, CUNY researchers uncover evidence suggesting that volcanic carbon emissions were not a major driver of the Earth’s most recent extinction event. Earth has…
Extinction Event
Size Isn’t Everything: Megafauna Extinction Mystery
Ancient clues, in the shape of fossils and archaeological evidence of varying quality scattered across Australia, have formed the basis of several hypotheses about the…
How Life on Land Recovered After “The Great Dying” Mass Extinction Event
By characterizing how ancient life responded to environmental stressors, researchers gain insights into how modern species might fare. Over the course of Earth’s history, several…
Asteroid Dust Found in Crater Closes Case on What Killed the Dinosaurs
Researchers believe they have closed the case of what killed the dinosaurs, definitively linking their extinction with an asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million…
What Really Killed the Dinosaurs? Harvard Researchers Say It Was a Comet – And They Believe They Know Where It Came From
New theory explains possible origin of the Armageddon-causing object. It forever changed history when it crashed into Earth about 66 million years ago. The Chicxulub…
Climate Change – Not Overhunting by Humans – Likely Drove the Extinction of North America’s Largest Animals
New research suggests that overhunting by humans was not responsible for the extinction of mammoths, ground sloths, and other North American megafauna. A new study…
Artificial Intelligence Discovers Surprising Patterns in Earth’s Biological Mass Extinctions
The idea that mass extinctions allow many new types of species to evolve is a central concept in evolution, but a new study using artificial…
Researchers Discover That Global Mass Extinctions of Land-Dwelling Animals Follow a 27-Million-Year Cycle
Researchers find that timing of mass extinctions lines up with asteroid impacts and massive volcanic eruptions. Mass extinctions of land-dwelling animals — including amphibians, reptiles,…
New Analysis Shows Dinosaurs Might Have Continued to Dominate the Earth if Asteroid Hadn’t Hit
A new statistical analysis of dinosaur diversity shows they were not in decline at the time of their extinction by an asteroid hit 66 million…
Concrete New Evidence That Big Volcanic Eruption Caused the Largest Mass Extinction
Researchers in Japan, the US, and China say they have found more concrete evidence of the volcanic cause of the largest mass extinction of life….
A Greenhouse Mega-Catastrophe Killed Nearly All Life on Earth – Here’s What Happened
Scientists show the unfolding of one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history. Earth’s history knows catastrophes that are unimaginable for humans. For example,…
Driver Identified of the Largest Mass Extinction in the History of the Earth
New study provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the Permian-Triassic boundary event. Life on Earth has a long, but also an extremely turbulent history. On more…
Stellar Explosion Blamed for Mass Extinction Event on Earth 360 Million Years Ago
Between a decline in biodiversity and a series of extinction events, the Late Devonian period was not the most hospitable time on Earth. And then…
Discovery of a New Mass Extinction – Carnian Pluvial Episode – 233 Million Years Ago
It’s not often a new mass extinction is identified; after all, such events were so devastating they really stand out in the fossil record. In…
“Green Bananas” – New Research Shows Exploding Stars May Have Caused Mass Extinction on Earth
Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon – it might be fun to think about, but this scene…
Mass Extinction 215 Million Years Ago Was NOT Due to Asteroid or Climate Change
A team of University of Rhode Island scientists and statisticians conducted a sophisticated quantitative analysis of a mass extinction that occurred 215 million years ago…
In Earth’s Greatest Extinction, Land Animals Began Dying Off Long Before Marine Life
New dates for fossils indicate land animal turnover extended for hundreds of thousands of years. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period…
Throughout Earth’s History, Solar System Processes Controlled the Carbon Cycle
The world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing…