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

When they reach a point where large numbers of species that had been abundant in the earlier fossil record become scarce, they’ve found an extinction event. The big five extinctions all wiped ...

What happened to these creatures during the extinction event and how they rebounded tells an important story, both about the ...

View Full Profile. Learn about our Editorial Policies. Most scientists agree that five events in Earth’s history qualify as “mass extinctions”—defined as events where more than three-quarters of ...

While the causes of the “big five” mass extinctions varied, understanding what happened during these dramatic chapters in Earth’s history — and what emerged in the aftermath of these ...

The "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon have long attracted significant attention from the geoscience ...

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 ...

Putting an end to a mass extinction sounds like an impossible task, but some researchers argue that doing so would be setting our ambitions too low ...

These events are known as the Big Five mass extinctions, and all signs suggest we are now on the precipice of a sixth. The new study that's generated so much conversation estimates that as many as ...

This era reflects The Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction that is among the “Big Five.” All the “Big Five” extinctions resulted from a combination of rapid climate change and significant ...