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 ...

While life on Earth does usually find a way, it is not without some intense past–and future–periods of mass death. Extinction is not exclusive to dinosaurs.Our planet has gone through at least ...

At least five times, a catastrophe has killed off the vast majority of Earth’s species. As scientists say we’re in a sixth mass extinction, what can we learn from the past?

Yet the past 400 years have seen 89 mammalian extinctions, almost 45 times the predicted rate, and another 169 mammal species are listed as critically endangered. Therein lies the concern ...

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.

According to Robert Watson, former chair of the UN’s Biodiversity Panel (IPBES), a true mass extinction means losing at least 75% of species. So far, we’ve lost about 2% over the past 500 years.

Mass extinctions have occurred five times in Earth’s history, each resulting in the loss of at least 75% of species. ... Unlike past extinctions driven by natural events, ...

If the top five major mass extinctions in the paleontological record each killed off at ... the IUCN has confirmed fewer than 1,000 extinctions from the past 500 years–just about 0.1 ...

The K-Pg extinction is the most recent of five events in Earth’s history that scientists consider mass extinctions, defined by paleontologists as events where more than 75 percent of species vanish ...