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.

That is, the 1 percent of species on Earth not yet extinct: For the last 3.5 billion ... Each mass extinction ended a geologic period — that’s why researchers refer to them by names such as ...

Though mass extinctions are deadly events ... waters to more readily hold onto dissolved toxic metals. The second worst mass extinction known to science, this event killed an estimated 85 percent ...

Asteroid impacts and volcanism have led to mass extinctions on our planet ... Among mollusks, for example, more than 7.5 percent of known species have gone extinct over the last 500 years.

The research looked at peaks in biodiversity loss and their relationship with atmospheric CO2, finding 50 events over the last 534 million years that can be considered mass extinctions. When you ...