Scientists look to fossils and evolutionary trees to help determine the rate of evolution – albeit with conflicting results. A new model by ETH researchers has helped to resolve these contradictions.
Evolution
Dec 18, 2018
0
135
Humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature's built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated that if current conservation efforts are not improved, ...
Evolution
Oct 15, 2018
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14557
How do the large-scale patterns observed in evolution arise? A new paper in the journal Evolution by researchers at Uppsala University and University of Leeds argues that many of them are a type of statistical artefact caused ...
Evolution
Sep 28, 2018
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332
The most severe mass extinction in Earth's history occurred with almost no early warning signs, according to a new study by scientists at MIT, China, and elsewhere.
Earth Sciences
Sep 19, 2018
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1585
A study that examined the shape of hundreds of fossilized shark teeth suggests that modern shark biodiversity was triggered by the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, about 66 million years ago.
Archaeology
Aug 2, 2018
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114
Fossil records tell us that the first macroscopic animals appeared on Earth about 575 million years ago. Twenty-four million years later, the diversity of animals began to mysteriously decline, leading to Earth's first know ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 27, 2018
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71
Sixty-six million years ago, the world burned. An asteroid crashed to Earth with a force one million times larger than the largest atomic bomb, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. But dinosaurs weren't the only ones ...
Archaeology
May 24, 2018
2
298
The late Devonian extinction, about 370 million years ago, is one of the 'Big Five.' It killed up to 80 percent of species, obliterating the lavish Devonian coral reef ecosystem. The final pulse in this multi-step crisis, ...
Earth Sciences
May 1, 2018
4
311
A team of researchers is using network analysis techniques - popularized through social media applications - to find patterns in Earth's natural history, as detailed in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 23, 2018
0
120
About 252 million years ago, more than 90 percent of all animal life on Earth went extinct. This event, called the "Permian-Triassic mass extinction," represents the greatest catastrophe in the history of life on Earth. Ecosystems ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 17, 2018
5
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