It is now common to refer to the current biodiversity crisis as the sixth mass extinction. But is this true? Are we in the middle of an event on the same scale as the five ancient mass extinctions Earth has experienced?
Ecology
Oct 14, 2021
0
9
Just weeks before the crucial COP26 climate conference, another global UN summit—this one tasked with reversing the destruction of nature—officially kicks off next week in Kunming, China.
Ecology
Oct 7, 2021
0
11
Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising pattern in how life reemerges from cataclysm. Research published Oct. 6 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows the usual rules of body size evolution change ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 6, 2021
0
2750
Not long after the dawn of complex animal life, tens of millions of years before the first of the "Big Five" mass extinctions, a rash of die-offs struck the world's oceans. Then, for reasons that scientists have debated for ...
Ecology
Oct 5, 2021
1
1394
The availability of prey and the ability to adapt to changing environments played key roles in the evolution of sharks. A new study, where 3,000 shark teeth were analyzed, provides new insight into how modern shark communities ...
Ecology
Oct 5, 2021
0
233
Death's come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government on Wednesday declared them extinct.
Ecology
Sep 29, 2021
3
53
The Etruscan civilization, which flourished during the Iron Age in central Italy, has intrigued scholars for millennia. With remarkable metallurgical skills and a now-extinct, non-Indo-European language, the Etruscans stood ...
Archaeology
Sep 24, 2021
5
11197
For many species, there is a lack of information needed to make extinction risk assessments—a problem that is particularly acute in biodiverse regions such as Madagascar. Scientists also fear that current methods of assessing ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 22, 2021
0
70
A team of paleontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer. All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 21, 2021
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6633
A new study suggests that all living snakes evolved from a handful of species that survived the giant asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other living things at the end of the Cretaceous. The authors say ...
Evolution
Sep 14, 2021
1
1964
