The Silurian Period is characterised by a dynamic interplay between environmental stressors and biotic turnover, with extinction events and carbon isotope excursions (CIEs) representing pivotal ...

Speciation and extinction are the twin engines that have sculpted the diversity of life on Earth. Speciation, the process by which new species arise from ancestral populations, is driven by a mixture ...

(CNN) — No species lasts forever — extinction is part of the evolution of life. But at least five times, a biological catastrophe has engulfed the planet, killing off the vast majority of species from ...

Scientists have made a surprising discovery that sheds new light on the role that oceanic deoxygenation (anoxia) played in one of the most devastating extinction events in Earth's history. Their ...

Supernova destroying planet, illustration. A rocky planet lies in the wake of its star, which has just gone supernova. The explosion shatters the planet. A complete census of massive stars in our part ...

(CNN) — A cataclysm engulfed the planet some 252 million years ago, wiping out more than 90% of all life. Known as the Great Dying, the mass extinction that ended the Permian geological period was the ...

About 66 million years ago – perhaps on a downright unlucky day in May – an asteroid smashed into our planet. Even groups that weathered the catastrophe, such as mammals, fishes and flowering plants, ...

The Jurassic Period is one of the three prehistoric geological periods of the Mesozoic Era. It spans from 145 million to 201 million years ago. This period was preceded by the Triassic Period and ...

Everyone knows that dinosaurs are extinct, and most people have some idea about how it might have occurred. But the exact periods in history when it happened are less well known. Was it a single ...

The U.S. Geological Survey has spent years pushing back against a persistent myth: that Yellowstone’s supervolcano is “overdue” for a catastrophic eruption capable of wiping out life across the ...

Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 150 million years. Compared to the mere 4–6 million years that scientists believe humans and their earliest ancestors have been on the planet, it wouldn’t be ...