Strata: Stories from Deep Time’ explores the origins of the air we breathe and untangles some of our planet’s oldest stories.

Surprising new fossil evidence undermines the idea that there was ever a mass extinction on land – and may force us to ...

The current mass extinction differs from all others in being driven by a single species rather than a planetary or galactic physical process. When the human race — Homo sapiens sapiens — migrated out ...

The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as ...

This sixth mass extinction, also referred to as the Holocene or Anthropocene extinction, is described as ongoing and caused by human activities. Hunting, overfishing, ...

A recent study has painted a concerning picture of Earth's distant future, suggesting that extreme heat could lead to a mass extinction event, potentially ending the reign of humans and mammals ...

Then, a six-mile-wide asteroid struck Mexico’s Yucatán at 43,200 mph, releasing energy beyond all human-made explosives combined and reshaping life on Earth. Unlike many species that survived the ...

Earth is no stranger to mass extinctions. Over the last 500 million years, there have been five of them, each wiping out between 70% and 95% of life. But what’s unfolding now isn’t due to a ...

Likewise, the Carnian pluvial episode, a smaller mass-extinction event that I’m also fond of and that occurred some 230 million years ago, was so pivotal that the scientists who study this ...