Browsing Tag
mass extinction
15 posts
How Fire, Not Spears, Wiped Out America’s Giants
Researchers at the La Brea Tar Pits discovered that a combination of climate change and massive, human-sparked wildfires—not just hunting—led to the extinction of North America’s megafauna.
56 million years ago, Earth underwent rapid global warming. Here’s what it did to pollinators
Vera Korasidis, The University of Melbourne and Scott L. Wing, Smithsonian Institution Pollinators play a vital role in…
Ancient fossils show how the last mass extinction forever scrambled the ocean’s biodiversity
Even bivalves looked different during the time of the dinosaurs, as these fossils of an ultra-fortified oyster, left,…
How we used AI to trace the evolution of bacteria on Earth
Association of two Cyanobacteria (Oscillatoria sp. and Chroococcus sp.). Ekky Ilham/Shutterstock Ben Woodcroft, Queensland University of Technology and…
What Might the Next Mass Extinction Look Like?
Earth has experienced several mass extinctions caused by events like asteroid impacts, volcanic activity, and climate change, with…
How the age of mammals could end
When Pangea Ultima forms, conditions on Earth will be too inhospitable for most mammals to survive. Maurus Spescha/Shutterstock…
Life Almost Lost All Its Oxygen—And We May Be In For a Repeat
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a string of seemingly minor events coalesced into a major shift that…
Scorpions Are Older Than Trees. Here’s How They’ve Survived For So Long.
Only so many animals can claim to be older than even trees, and scorpions seem to be among…
How Reptiles Dominated the Jurassic Seas
Had you been swimming out in the open seas during the Jurassic period, you might spot something that…
How Did Plants Survive the Asteroid That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs?
Around 60% of all plant species on Earth died with the nonavian dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when…