A devastating ice age wiped out most marine life, yet new research reveals how this ancient disaster unexpectedly paved the ...

During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots ...

A massive ice age wiped out ocean life 445 million years ago, reshaping ecosystems and setting the stage for jawed fish ...

About 445 million years ago, Earth nearly wiped out life in the oceans. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, ...

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, ...

Discover how the first mass extinction put jawed fishes on the map, species that would later come to dominate animal life on ...

A spectacular fossil trove on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen shows that marine life made a stunning comeback after Earth’s greatest extinction. Tens of thousands of fossils reveal fully aquatic ...

Scientists have long treated mass extinctions as events locked deep in the fossil record. That framing now feels less distant ...

Researchers found remains of a thriving marine community that existed at the beginning of the Dinosaur Age in the Arctic ...

Tropical riparian ecosystems—those found along rivers and wetlands—recovered much faster than expected following the end-Permian mass extinction around 252 million years ago, according to new research ...

More than 250 million years ago, life on Earth faced its most devastating crisis — a global event so severe that it wiped out nearly three-quarters of life on land and an even larger share in the ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Stewart Edie, Smithsonian Institution (THE CONVERSATION) About 66 million years ago – ...