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 ...

It's safe to say that most of us are familiar with the concept of mass extinction. But this is by no means a recent ...

Our species likes it cold. Homo sapiens evolved in — and still inhabits — one of Earth’s rare and fragile ice ages, periods distinguished not by an abundance of saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths ...

Nearly all life that ever existed on Earth eventually disappeared. Five known mass extinctions wiped out up to 96 percent of ...

The West Texas desert has a surprising feature: a prehistoric ocean reef. There is a surprising natural wonder in the middle of the vast West Texas desert: a prehistoric ocean reef built from the ...

The Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, occurring approximately 66 million years ago, represents one of the most dramatic biotic crises in Earth’s history. It is marked by the abrupt disappearance ...

Sharks might be the all time bullet-dodging champions. They’ve been around for about 450 million years, longer than trees, longer than the rings of Saturn, and longer than most of the other life on ...

A fire-bellied newt (Cynops ensicauda) photographed on Amami Island (Japan). A recent study suggested that the extinction of this and other genera was part of a mass extinction event that threatens ...

This lineage was widespread and abundant in the Late Cretaceous, but just a few species survive today off the coasts of Australia. If you’re an animal living through a mass extinction, it’s best to be ...