When considering mass extinctions, people often think of the asteroid strike that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. But life ...

The fossils offer a rare glimpse into a cataclysmic event that brought a sudden end to the greatest explosion of life in our planet's history.

Around 540 million years ago, Earth's biosphere underwent a pivotal transformation, shifting from a microbe-dominated world ...

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, ...

At some point in the deep past, humans may have come frighteningly close to disappearing altogether. Here’s what we know, ...

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

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 ...

A treasure trove of Cambrian fossils has been discovered in southern China, providing a window on marine life shortly after ...

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 ...

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 ...

Almost all life on land and in the ocean was wiped out during "The Great Dying," a mass extinction event at the end of the Permian Era about 250 million years ago. New evidence suggests that the Great ...

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 ...