Of all the species that have ever lived, more than 99% are now extinct. Most of them quietly disappeared during periods of “background extinction”, whereby a handful of species become extinct every ...

The Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast. A mass extinction in the Late Devonian period 375 million years ago led to the disappearance of the world's reef systems for 100 million years. The ...

Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study ...

Biodiversity - the plants, animals and the ecosystems that sustain life on earth, including humans - is under threat, with scientists unanimously dubbing the current period as the 6th Major Mass ...

A massive ice age wiped out ocean life 445 million years ago, reshaping ecosystems and setting the stage for jawed fish ...

Nearly all sharks disappeared in a 100,000-year period about 19 million years ago, research shows. The total number of sharks declined by 90%, and the number of shark species decreased by 70%.

Shocking research has warned that humans are driving extinctions at a scale not seen since the mass extinction of the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. The researchers from the University of York, ...

One of Earth’s earliest mass extinctions wiped out most ocean life during a sudden global ice age. From the ruins, jawed vertebrates survived, diversified, and transformed the course of evolution.

A new theory suggests depletion of trace elements in the oceans was a factor in three major mass extinction events in the past 600 million years, according to new research led by Flinders University's ...

Unless climate change is curbed, Earth's oceans could see a mass extinction of marine life unlike anything the planet has seen for millions of years, according to a new study published Thursday. "If ...