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 ...

Paleontologists recognize five big mass extinctions in the fossil record, marked by the loss of a significant number of species in a (geologically speaking) short span of time. Theories to explain ...

Nearly all life that ever existed on Earth eventually disappeared. Five known mass extinctions wiped out up to 96 percent of species in sudden, catastrophic events. While mainstream science favored ...

Sharks might be the all time bullet-dodging champions. They’ve been around for about 450 million years, longer than trees, longer than the rings of Saturn, and longer than most of the other life on ...

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Stewart Edie receives funding from the Smithsonian Institution. Even groups that weathered the catastrophe, such as mammals, fishes and flowering plants, suffered severe population declines and ...