Farther back in our planet’s history, volcanic eruptions, rapid climate change, and plummeting oxygen levels have caused at least four additional mass extinctions, with smaller pulses of biodiversity ...

Global calamities like the one that doomed most dinosaurs forever alter the varieties of life found on Earth, but new research shows that it doesn't take a catastrophe to end entire lineages. An ...

If — when? — the African elephant goes extinct in an estimated two decades, there will be mourning and memory and tribute. People will post photos of themselves at the circus as kids. They'll mimic ...

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This graph plots extinction rates of marine animal families over the last 600 million years. The shaded band indicates the normal range of extinction rates, known as "background extinction." The five ...

For most of human history, extinction has been understood as an immutable fact of nature—a one-way door that, once closed, could never be reopened. Species disappear, their genetic innovations vanish ...

HONOLULU (KITV4) – A study led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) biologists found even more evidence that Earth is experiencing a Sixth Mass Extinction; this time caused by humans. The study, ...

Meara covers streaming service news for CNET. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. When she's not writing, she likes to dote over her cat, sip black coffee ...

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 ...

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 and their recoveries. The discovery is an ...