Surprising new fossil evidence undermines the idea that there was ever a mass extinction on land – and may force us to ...

M ost scientists agree that five events in Earth’s history qualify as “mass extinctions”—defined as events where more than three-quarters of estimated species are wiped out. These ordeals were caused ...

The one two-punch would lead 85 percent of marine species to disappear—and come to be known to paleontologists as our world’s first mass extinction. Extinction is a fact of life.

The big five extinctions all wiped out more than 70 percent of Earth life at the time—and the most -lethal of them, the Permian-Triassic extinction around 252 million years ago, most likely took ...

Earth has already faced five mass extinctions—and scientists say the sixth has begun. Species are vanishing, climates are ...

The "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon have long attracted significant attention from the geoscience community and the public. Among them, the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME ...

The 'Big Five' mass extinctions are labeled at the troughs of the diversity curve, with the relative magnitude of the drop given in parentheses in upper left (from Raup & Sepkoski [1982], p. 1502 ...

The shaded band indicates the normal range of extinction rates, known as "background extinction." The five peaks show the "Big Five" mass extinction events, when extinction rates sharply exceeded ...

The “big five” mass extinctions, the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, end-Permian, end-triassic and end-Cretaceous, wiped out large portions of earth’s species. The survivors inherited the earth. Today, ...

There have been five big mass extinctions in Earth's history - these are called the "Big Five". Understanding the reasons and timelines of these events are important to understand the speed and ...

The first of the Big Five mass extinctions transpired about 445 million years ago, marking the boundary between the Ordovician and Silurian periods back when fish and land plants were still ...