February 13, 2019
Geomedia: Books: A witty look at "The Ends of the World"
Our planet has been through some harrowing episodes, particularly in the form of mass extinctions since the advent of multicellular life. How …
The EARTH archive
Mass Extinction
Explore the archive by subject.
21 articles · Page 1 of 1
January 17, 2019
Free swimmers came back first after Great Dying
About 252 million years ago, at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods, the vast majority of marine and terrestrial life died out …
August 3, 2018
Mercury links Big Five extinction events
Mercury concentration spikes in the geologic record have been linked to massive volcanism in the form of large igneous provinces (LIP) such as …
May 23, 2018
Down to Earth With: Jessica Whiteside
From Morocco to Connecticut, Jessica Whiteside has explored almost every Mesozoic rock outcrop there is. And she’s only three years out of …
April 10, 2018
Hot tropics drove out ancient reptiles, but they came back
About 252 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia rapidly warmed Earth, resulting in the end-Permian mass extinction …
November 15, 2017
Volcanic activity contributed to first of the "Big Five" mass extinctions
During the Ordovician, between about 488 million and 444 million years ago, plant life first emerged on land, while primitive fish and a variety …
September 14, 2017
Volcanism triggered end-Triassic extinction
The end-Triassic mass extinction exterminated up to three-quarters of all species on land and in the oceans 201 million years ago. This die-off …
June 19, 2017
Hangover echinoderms survived the Great Dying
The end-Permian extinction event was disastrous for a wide range of organisms on land and in the sea, with as many as 70 percent of terrestrial …
January 25, 2017
Geomedia: Books: Exploring "The Worst of Times"
Every reader of this magazine knows something about mass extinctions. But few of us know as much as Paul B. Wignall, a professor of …
January 18, 2017
Downgrading the Great Dying
The end-Permian extinction, nicknamed the “Great Dying,” is thought to be the deadliest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Many textbooks claim …
November 15, 2016
Nutrient deficiency delayed life after mass extinction
After Earth’s most severe mass extinction, life took up to 9 million years to recover — millions of years longer than after other extinction …
November 15, 2016
Ancient plankton communities stressed before mass extinction
Changes in our modern ecosystems, such as declines in biodiversity and invasive species, are similar to those that preceded the first of Earth’s …
October 14, 2016
When Earth hit the reset button on life: New research on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction
About five years ago, paleobiologist Matthew Clapham was walking along Panther Beach on California’s coast when something caught his eye. He …
September 20, 2016
Antarctic no place to hide during end-Cretaceous extinction
The end-Cretaceous extinction is famous for killing off the dinosaurs, but many other species perished as well. A new study in Nature …
September 20, 2016
Mammals hit harder than thought by end-Cretaceous extinction
Mammals, unlike the remaining nonavian dinosaurs and many other animals, are thought to have fared relatively well through the massive meteorite …
June 16, 2016
Weak magnetic field may have triggered Earth's first mass extinction
For about the first 3 billion years of life, the only living organisms on Earth were microscopic. The Ediacaran Period, between 635 million and …
February 19, 2016
Volcanic aerosols not enough to cause mass extinctions?
Mass extinctions — when more than half of Earth’s species disappear in a geologic instant — offer some of the planet’s most perplexing unsolved …
December 31, 2015
Permian-Triassic extinctions timed differently on land and at sea
Life on land and in the sea was nearly eradicated about 252 million years ago in the largest-known mass extinction. The cataclysm, known as the …
June 16, 2015
Great drying led to great dying down under
If not for the megafaunal extinctions that wiped out many large animals at the end of the Pleistocene, the world might be a very different place …
December 8, 2014
Geomedia: Books: Are we causing a sixth extinction?
Last year, Elizabeth Kolbert released her latest excellent book. Her previous volume, “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” set a high bar for …
January 5, 2012
Do impacts trigger extinctions? Impact theory still controversial
The revolution started with a bang in 1980. For some, this revolution became a religion, even an orthodoxy. The true believers became proselytes …