Build Back Smaller? Extinction and Origination Patterns Change After Mass Extinctions
A sweeping analysis of marine fossils from most of the past half-billion years shows the usual rules of body size evolution change during mass extinctions…
Extinction Event
The Climate-Driven Mass Extinction No One Had Seen – Until Now
Fossils from Duke collection uncover a previously unknown mass extinction event in Africa. Sixty-three percent. That’s the proportion of mammal species that vanished from Africa…
Researchers Discover Four Dinosaurs in Montana: Fieldwork Pieces Together Life at the End of “Dinosaur Era”
A team of paleontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this…
Ancient Oxygen Spike Coincided With Massive Global Extinction
Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying. In an event that marked the end of the Permian period,…
Dark Primitive Asteroids: Zeroing In on Source of the Impactor That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs
The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 66 million years ago likely came from the outer…
New Geochemical Testing Confirms Cause of End-Permian Mass Extinction Event That Wiped Out Most Life on Earth
Results demonstrate the power of nickel isotope analyses, which are relatively new, to solve long-standing problems in the geosciences. The most severe mass extinction event…
Massive Die-Off Discovered by Accident: A Shark Mystery Millions of Years in the Making
The biggest shark attack in history did not involve humans. A new study by Earth scientists from Yale and the College of the Atlantic has…
Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction Took Ten Times Longer on Land Than in the Water
Our planet’s worst mass extinction event happened 252 million years ago when massive volcanic eruptions caused catastrophic climate change. The vast majority of animal species…
After Mass Extinctions, Herbivores Developed Powerful Jaws to Digest Tougher Plants
Researchers at the University of Bristol found that plant eaters diversified quickly after mass extinctions to eat different kinds of plants, and the ones that…
Mammals Evolved Big Brains After Big Disasters (Mass Extinction and Climate Change)
Largest study of its kind reveals the way relative brain size of mammals changed over the last 150 million years. Scientists from Stony Brook University…
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…
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,…