In fact, the last great extinction event in the history of life on Earth could be our fault. Human activities such as habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and overexploitation of species ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Exploding stars in near-solar space may have triggered at least two mass extinction events in Earth's history. An analysis of the ...

Learn more about how the surprising survival of marine ecosystems after the last mass extinction can help us better prepare for the next one. Earth has experienced five documented mass extinctions to ...

According to a recently published study in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, researchers dated zircon crystals from the site ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. This article is more than 2 years old. In the past 500 ...

The resulting extinction decimated animal groups, like archaeocyathids (reef-building marine sponges) and hyoliths (animals with small conical shells). "It's unusual to point to a tectonic cause for ...

Shortly after an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, life for non-avian dinosaurs ended, but the evolutionary story for the early ancestors of birds began. The fossil record tells us ...

An ancient crater beneath Ames, Oklahoma, is now believed to be nearly 100 million years younger than previously thought, potentially linking it to a major mass extinction event.

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 ...

Extinction is inevitable. Expected. Almost all (99%) species that have ever existed have died out. Those disappearances have largely occurred at consistent background rates. But in the context of mass ...