Our planet’s first known mass extinction happened about 440 million years ago. Species diversity on Earth had been increasing over a period of roughly 30 million years, but that would come to a halt ...

Mass extinctions are extremely catastrophic events on Earth. Throughout Earth's evolutionary history, numerous mass extinctions have occurred, with five major mass extinctions being particularly ...

Mass extinction events throughout Earth’s history are characterized as significant disruptions to life on the planet. There have been five major extinction events that have fundamentally changed how ...

The mass extinction that ended the Permian geological epoch, 252 million years ago, wiped out most animals living on Earth. Huge volcanoes erupted, releasing 100,000 billion metric tons of carbon ...

Roughly 252 million years ago, Earth experienced its deadliest known extinction. Known as the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction, or “The Great Dying,” this cataclysm wiped out over 80% of marine ...

Learn how geological clues preserved in ancient oceans link repeated volcanic eruptions to Triassic marine extinctions. Mass extinctions are often imagined as sudden, planet-wide catastrophes caused ...

A new study reveals that Earth's biomes changed dramatically in the wake of mass volcanic eruptions 252 million years ago. Reading time 3 minutes 252 million years ago, volcanic eruptions in ...

A newly described dinosaur that appears to have persisted beyond a catastrophic die-off is forcing scientists to rethink how mass extinctions actually play out on the ground. Instead of a clean break ...

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 ...

Ancient frog relatives survived the aftermath of the largest mass extinction of species by feeding on freshwater prey that evaded terrestrial predators, University of Bristol academics have found. In ...

The Palisades cliffs west of New York City rear up from the Hudson River like the spine of some ancient beast—and that impression is not far off. Their basalt backbone is a remnant of an immense lava ...