Since the beginning of time, Earth has created life and then wiped out most of it in catastrophic, ultra-destructive moments.

The length of time necessary to recover from a mass extinction may seem like a problem from the past, but a team of Penn State researchers is investigating recovery from the second largest extinction ...

The early Palaeozoic Era records the initial biodiversification of the Phanerozoic. The increase in biodiversity involved drastic changes in taxon longevity, and in rates of origination and extinction ...

Marine fossil specimens unearthed in northern Portugal are filling a gap in understanding evolution during the Middle Ordovician period. A clutch of marine fossil specimens unearthed in northern ...

The once very successful group of marine arthropods called trilobites were hit hard by the Ordovician mass extinction and never fully recovered until going extinct 200 million years later. At the end ...

New research reveals more information about the first and oldest of the 'big five' extinctions. Around 85% of marine species, most of which lived in shallow oceans near continents, disappeared during ...

We all know that the dinosaurs died in a mass extinction. But did you know that there were other mass extinctions? There are five most significant mass extinctions, known as the “big five,” where at ...

Our planet’s first known mass extinction happened about 440 million years ago. Species diversity on Earth had been increasing over a period of roughly 30 million years, but that would come to a halt ...