In the past half-billion years, Earth has been hit again and again by mass extinctions, wiping out most species on the planet. And every time, life recovered and ultimately went on to increase in diversity.
Evolution
Sep 16, 2019
2
377
No more than 540 million years ago there was a huge boom in the diversity of animals on Earth. The first larger animals evolved in what is today known as the Cambrian explosion. In the time that followed, the animals evolved ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 10, 2019
3
290
When Earth's species were rapidly diversifying nearly 500 million years ago, that evolution was driven by complex factors including global cooling, more oxygen in the atmosphere, and more nutrients in the oceans. But it took ...
Archaeology
Aug 15, 2019
3
636
Fossils that had gone unstudied since the early 20thcentury helped a team led by University of New England (UNE) palaeontologist Dr Russell Bicknell to address a long-standing puzzle: were ancestors of the iconic horseshoe ...
Archaeology
Aug 7, 2019
0
25
Geologists have dubbed Earth's middle age the "boring billion." Occurring some 1,800 to 800 million years ago, it has long been considered a period when little happened on Earth in terms of biological evolution, climate, ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 26, 2019
7
99
Earth's first dinner party wasn't impressive, just a bunch of soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms sunk into sediment on the ocean floor, sharing in scraps of organic matter suspended in the water around them.
Archaeology
Jun 19, 2019
3
104
The quest to discover what drove one of the most important evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth has taken a new, fascinating twist.
Earth Sciences
Jun 19, 2019
1
46
Extreme fluctuations in atmospheric oxygen levels corresponded with evolutionary surges and extinctions in animal biodiversity during the Cambrian explosion, finds new study led by UCL and the University of Leeds.
Earth Sciences
May 6, 2019
3
551
A team of researchers from Northwest University and Guizhou University, both in China and one from the U.S., has found and partially excavated a new treasure trove of marine fossils from the "Cambrian explosion" in southern ...
Scientists are rethinking a major milestone in animal evolution, after gaining fresh insights into how life on Earth diversified millions of years ago.
Evolution
Mar 11, 2019
0
162
