Scientists have long treated mass extinctions as events locked deep in the fossil record. That framing now feels less distant. New research points to patterns that resemble earlier biological ...

Massive volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula have long been proposed as an alternative cause for the demise of the dinosaurs. This phase of active volcanism took place in a period just before ...

Violent supernovas may have caused two of Earth’s largest mass extinctions that have never been completely explained, according to a theory put forward in new research.During the final stages of a ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth’s oceans turned into a danger zone. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, ...

(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 ...

Mass extinction events represent intervals of abrupt, large‐scale loss of biodiversity that have repeatedly reshaped life on Earth. These crises are commonly linked to dramatic environmental ...

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 ...

As monotremes, unusual traits like egg-laying may have helped secure the lineage during the extinction event that erased countless others. Platypuses survived by living small, and being rightly placed ...