Earth has a flair for dramatic resets, though it usually takes millions of years to deliver them. Over its long history, life has been knocked back by volcanic eruptions, climate swings, changing seas ...

When the world goes bad, some plants do something astonishing. They can’t run or hide, nor can they do much about changing ...

Scientists discovered hidden phosphorus spikes in ancient limestone that may help explain two of Earth’s worst marine mass ...

In school, we learned about the asteroid that wiped out an estimated 76% of all creatures. Scientists now call this the fifth mass extinction. You’re reading that correctly: throughout Earth’s history ...

The collapse of tropical forests during Earth's most catastrophic extinction event was the primary cause of the prolonged global warming which followed, according to new research. The Permian–Triassic ...

Everyone knows that dinosaurs are extinct, and most people have some idea about how it might have occurred. But the exact periods in history when it happened are less well known. Was it a single ...

The West Texas desert has a surprising feature: a prehistoric ocean reef. There is a surprising natural wonder in the middle of the vast West Texas desert: a prehistoric ocean reef built from the ...

Conservation genomics is a bold new tool for protecting life on earth, but it will take all of us to slow the extinction ...

A group of Earth scientists led by Utrecht University has created an online tool that shows where any place on Earth was ...

The bluebuck vanished from the southern tip of Africa around 1800, hunted to extinction only 34 years after European ...