Life on our planet has experienced many mass extinctions over its 4.5 billion years. Scientists see evidence for at least five major episodes that eradicated creatures great and small. And many ...

Here’s a look back at the five major extinction events over the past 500 million years—each one wiping out more than half of life on Earth in a relatively short time. 1. Ordovician extinction ...

According to Our World in Data, Mass extinctions are not new to Earth. For over 500 million years, the planet has experienced five major biological crises, during which at least half of all ...

This series of mass extinctions during the Devonian period eventually eliminated about 75 percent of life. However, some of Earth’s oldest fish called coelacanths make it out unscathed.

If we continue on our current trajectory, the sixth mass extinction is inevitable and the times we're living through now will be part of that geological period.

Life’s first major catastrophe crept across the planet with the spread of ice. Early life had been thriving in a warm greenhouse world, as creatures such as trilobites, corals, brachiopods and ...

Earth has experienced five mass extinction events over its 4.5 billion-year history. A sixth mass extinction is underway as a result of human-driven climate change.

Life There’s growing evidence the big five mass extinctions never happened Surprising new fossil evidence undermines the idea that there was ever a mass extinction on land – and may force us ...

If the top five major mass extinctions in the paleontological record each killed off at least 75 percent of species at the time, then the sixth one should theoretically cross the same threshold.

The End Triassic Extinction marks one of the five major mass extinction events in Earth's history, occurring at the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods, and setting the stage for ...

Asteroid impacts and volcanism have led to mass extinctions on our planet. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / NASA / Public Domain Life’s first major catastrophe crept across the planet with the ...