Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon—it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a disaster when the radiation devastates life as we know it. Killer cosmic rays ...
Astronomy
Aug 18, 2020
7
6859
In 2015, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich coauthored a study declaring the world's sixth mass extinction was underway. Five years later, Ehrlich and colleagues at other institutions have a grim update: the extinction rate ...
Ecology
Jun 1, 2020
8
682
Researchers at the University of Southampton have shown that an extinction event 360 million years ago, that killed much of the Earth's plant and freshwater aquatic life, was caused by a brief breakdown of the ozone layer ...
Earth Sciences
May 27, 2020
20
2606
Cassowaries are big flightless birds with blue heads and dinosaur-looking feet; they look like emus that time forgot, and they're objectively terrifying. They're also, along with their ostrich and kiwi cousins, part of the ...
Plants & Animals
May 13, 2020
3
1017
In a new study, Stanford researchers have strongly bolstered the theory that a lack of oxygen in Earth's oceans contributed to a devastating die-off approximately 444 million years ago. The new results further indicate that ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 14, 2020
34
1824
The mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago—one of the great turnovers of life on Earth—appears to have played out differently and at different times on land and in the sea, according to ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2020
6
2737
The world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing us on course for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 10, 2020
42
2858
When you were young, were you the type of child who would scour open fields looking for bumble bees? Today, it is much harder for kids to spot them, since bumble bees are drastically declining in North America and in Europe.
Plants & Animals
Feb 6, 2020
22
685
Volcanic activity did not play a direct role in the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, according to an international, Yale-led team of researchers. It was all about the asteroid.
Earth Sciences
Jan 16, 2020
17
2186
When a series of large mammal species began going extinct roughly 12,000 years ago, many surviving species began going their separate ways, says new research led by Macquarie University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ecology
Sep 19, 2019
0
802
