A speculative paper argues that ancient planetary flybys may have helped trigger some of Earth’s mass extinctions.

Earth’s history has been shaped by five mass extinctions—catastrophic periods when life changed so dramatically that entire ...

Scientists are increasingly worried we may be witnessing the start of the “sixth mass extinction” – the first to be caused by ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A wildfire frontline with emergency services nearby, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Farther back in our planet's ...

OSLO (Reuters) - Life in the oceans is at imminent risk of the worst spate of extinctions in millions of years due to threats such as climate change and over-fishing, a study showed on Tuesday. Time ...

Shortly after an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, life for non-avian dinosaurs ended, but the evolutionary story for the early ancestors of birds began. The fossil record tells us ...

Last year, hiking in Morocco’s eastern Atlas Mountains, I found an ammonite, a fossil of those spiral-shape cephalopods that to many symbolize paleontology itself. The fossilization process had turned ...

The accelerating rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by human activity is pushing the planet toward a potential mass extinction, as highlighted in an eye-opening Guardian article published ...

(CNN) — No species lasts forever — extinction is part of the evolution of life. But at least five times, a biological catastrophe has engulfed the planet, killing off the vast majority of species from ...

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 ...